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Literary and Social 

SILHOUETTES 



BY 



HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN 







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'^MH 3 1894* 



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NEW YORK 

HARPER AND BROTHERS 

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Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers. 
All rights reserved. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

TYPES OF AMERICAN AVOMEN i 

GERMAN AND AMERICAN WOMEN 24 

THE AMERICAN NOVELIST AND HIS PUBLIC . . 41 
THE PROGRESSIVE REALISM OF AMERICAN FIC- 
TION 58 

THE HERO IN FICTION 79 

AMERICAN LITERARY CRITICISM 97 

AMERICA IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE 117 

THE ETHICS OF ROBERT BROWNING 131 

MARS vs. APOLLO 147 

PHILISTINISM 163 

SOME STRAY NOTES ON ALPHONSE DAUDET . 178 

MY LOST SELF 194 

THE MERIDIAN OF LIFE 205 



TYPES OF AMERICAN WOMEN 




ERBERT SPENCER insinu- 
ates in one of his sociological 
works that the indirection, 
the coquetry, \.\\^ finesse, nay, 
all the arts which we find 
so adorable in women, are modified forms 
of hypocrisy. Before the advent of civil- 
ization, woman had in pure self-defence 
to practise an elaborate deception. In 
order to please her brutal lord and secure 
predominance among dangerous rivals, 
she had to disguise her natural senti- 
ments, and return caresses for blows and 
smiles for discourtesy. As she could 
not accomplish her purposes by force, she 
became an expert in domestic diplomacy. 
The craftier, the more guileful, she was, 
the better were her chances of survival. 
And thus it has come to pass that, though 
the necessity for intricate behavior is now 



much lessened, women practise to-day, in 
a more elusive and refined way, the arts 
which the instinct of self-preservation im- 
posed upon their barbarous ancestresses. 
This is, as all will admit, an unpoetical 
theory, and a revolting one to a chival- 
rous mind. I, therefore, purposely shield 
myself behind the great name of Herbert 
Spencer in reproducing it. Though I do 
not vouch for it as true, I hold it to be 
not improbable. A number of unpleasant 
things will be found in the ancestry of 
every one of us, if we pursue our researches 
far enough back ; but, in my opinion, they 
redound to our credit, rather than the con- 
trary, if we convert them into something 
useful and agreeable. When we consider 
what malodorous things may have been 
distilled into the fragrance of the rose 
and the lily, it is scarcely worth while to 
regret a remote grandmother's mendacity 
which in the granddaughter is evaporat- 
ed into an archness and witchery, lending 
charm to her speech and a more exquisite 
flavor to her personality. I feel in such 
a case positively grateful to the grand- 
mother for having hoodwinked her lord. 



and do not question the ability of the fair 
descendant to do the same, though with- 
out coming into conflict with a single 
commandment of the Decalogue. The 
blunt command, "Thou shalt not," was, I 
suspect, meant for men rather than for 
women; for I have known some highly- 
developed members of the sex who have 
been able to wind in and out among the 
ten fatal prohibitions, coming dangerous- 
ly near some of them, but without getting 
entangled in any. There is to them a 
rare pleasure in this hazardous play — 
which again hints at an inherited com- 
plexity of character, never wholly com- 
prehensible to men. 

I have remarked that the necessity for 
duplicity of the cruder sort has lessened 
and is constantly lessening. But it has not 
altogether vanished. So long as marriage 
remains the normal fate of women, the 
vast majority of them will and must en- 
deavor to make themselves pleasing to 
men. They must consider primarily, not 
what they would like to be, but what men 
would like them to be. Because the 
feminine ideal for the average man is an 



unindividualized or but faintly individual- 
ized creature — a mere personification of 
the sex, as it were — the majority of girls 
pay homage to this unworthy ideal by 
simulating a clinging dependence and a 
featureless blankness of character. They 
repress their real selves, or consciously or 
unconsciously disguise them. Their ed- 
ucation, which, in this country as else- 
where, trains them in seei7ti7ig rather than 
in being, does not aim to make pronounced 
and capable individuals of them (as in the 
case of boys), but to develop them into 
the accepted, traditional type of woman- 
hood which is supposed to have the sanc- 
tion of the Bible and of the experience of 
the ages. As to the wisdom of this I do 
not wish at present to express an opinion. 
There is no doubt that when women do 
break away from this traditional standard, 
as more and more of them do, they be- 
come more outrees, more revolutionary in 
speech and conduct than men similarly in- 
clined. There is a good reason for this, or 
several good reasons. If a woman has the 
courage to aspire to anything beyond the 
common lot, the world puts her on the de- 



fensive, and by its hostile criticism forces 
her to account for herself, and drives her 
then by degrees into a more extreme po- 
sition than she had at first thought of 
occupying. For the sake of a consistency 
which we do not demand of others, she 
is obliged to antagonize doctrines and 
institutions which she had never before 
thought of antagonizing, and to define her 
attitude towards everything under the 
sun, until she becomes unwholesomely 
conscious in every breath she draws. 

In the countries of Europe there is 
scarcely an exception to this rule. The 
woman who is not content to be a mere 
embodiment of her sex, and who there- 
fore by individual aspiration strives to 
dififerentiate herself, is tabooed by the 
best society and made the target of cheap 
ridicule. She may, like Florence Nightin- 
gale or Sister Dora, be permitted to bear 
more than her part of the world's bur- 
dens, but she is not permitted to aspire 
for more than her allotted share of its 
privileges. It is not so very long since 
similar conditions prevailed in the United 
States ; nay, they do to a certain extent 



yet prevail. But that a very substantial 
progress has been made here is neverthe- 
less certain. Our social conditions afford 
a wider scope for individual development 
than do those of Europe. One of the first 
observations which the English or Ger- 
man traveller is apt to make after landing 
in New York, is that American women 
have more vivacity, more character, more 
freedom of speech and manners than the 
women of England or Germany. That is 
but another way of saying that they are 
more individualized. They have a more 
distinct, and as a rule a more piquant, 
flavor of personality. They are not mere- 
ly specimens of the feminine gender more 
or less attractive, and labelled for the sake 
of convenience Minnie, Jennie, or Fannie, 
but they are primarily Minnie and Jennie 
and Fannie (though I could wish they had 
nobler and more dignified appellations), 
endowed with and modified by their fem- 
inine gender. It follows from this that 
the types of women are here more varied 
and more pronounced than in Europe ; 
and if an experience of twenty-five years, 
devoted to discreet observation and sym- 



pathetic study, gives me a right to judge, 
I should like to disburden my note-books 
of some more or less pretentious sketches 
which are beginning to rebel against their 
obscurity. 

The first woman whose acquaintance I 
made in the United States (in 1869) was 
a very pretty Western girl, who took a 
peculiar pleasure in saying and doing 
things which she knew would shock my 
European notions of propriety. She was 
slangy in her speech, careless in her pro- 
nunciation, and bent upon " having a good 
time" without reference to the prohi- 
bitions which are framed for the special 
purpose of annoying women. I was some- 
times in danger of misinterpreting her 
conduct, but soon came to the conclusion 
that there was no harm in her. She ruled 
her father and her mother, who some- 
times interposed feeble objections to her 
plans for her own and my amusement ; 
but the end invariably was that a puz- 
zled assent was yielded to all her pro- 
ceedings. She had about as much idea 
of propriety (in the European sense) as a 
cat has of mathematics. She recognized 



no law except her own sovereign will, 
and her demands were usually so em- 
phatic that no one could disagree with 
her without the risk of quarrelling. Patri- 
otic she was — bristling with combative- 
ness if a criticism was made which implied 
disrespect of American manners or insti- 
tutions. She was good-natured, generous 
to a fault, and brimming with energy. 

This young girl is the type of American 
womanhood which has become domes- 
ticated in European fiction. She is to 
French, English, and German authors the 
American type par excellence. She is a 
familiar figure in the French drama, and 
her pistol-firing and her amusing rowdy- 
ism relieve the monotony of many a dull 
novel. Ouida has caricatured her in Moths 
and Sardou in L'Oncle Sam. Henry James 
ventured some years ago to publish a 
mild edition of her in Daisy Miller, and 
outraged patriotism denounced him as a 
slanderer of his country, declaring that he 
had libelled American womanhood. I, too, 
in a recent novel, was tempted to make a 
little literary capital out of my early ac- 
quaintance with this personification of the 



Declaration of Independence.* I was told 
by a chorus of reviewers (and I suspected 
the soprano note in most of them) that the 
type was one of my own invention ; that it 
did not exist except in my jaundiced eye; 
that, if it did exist, I had outrageously 
caricatured it ; and that I had conclusive- 
ly proved myself an alien, devoid of sym- 
pathy with the American character. Now, 
I had prided myself on having avoided 
the farcical exaggerations of my Euro- 
pean co7ifreres. I had imagined that my 
"emancipated young woman " was strict- 
ly true to life, and that no single trait of 
her vivacious personality had been set 
down in malice or for the sake of effect. 

It would seem odd indeed, considering 
the fact that the novelists of all foreign 
countries have pounced upon this type 
as being peculiarly American, if the type 
had no existence. Such unanimity in 
misrepresentation would scarcely be con- 
ceivable, unless they had come together 
with malice aforethought and agreed 
among themselves as to how they were 

* Delia Saunders in The Light of Her Coufitenafice. 



to blacken the character of cisatlantic 
womanhood. But if I had been a party 
to such a dastardly plot, I dare say I 
should have forfeited my domestic peace 
long ago ; for I have furnished the most 
incontestable proof possible that I am a 
stranger to the sentiments which animate 
these wretched traducers. I may, there- 
fore, perhaps, be permitted to remark that 
it need not argue disloyalty to the Consti- 
tution if a novelist refuses to depict coii- 
leur de rose everything he sees. The in- 
dependent young Americaine who pleases 
herself without reference to the tastes of 
others, is not a wholly agreeable phenom- 
enon ; but it is of no use to deny her ex- 
istence. She is very prevalent in Europe ; 
and though she rarely invades the so- 
called best society of our seaboard cities, 
you need only go abroad or sufficiently 
far west to find her in all her glory. 

The best society, it may be observed in 
parenthesis, is not the best place to study 
American types. The highest civilization 
is hostile to types. It tends towards uni- 
formity of manners, rubs off angularities 
of conduct, obliterates glaring character- 



istics. At first glance, a New York after- 
noon tea does not differ strikingly from 
a London afternoon tea. In both places 
people go to show themselves, half out of 
vanity, half as a matter of duty. They 
have no expectation of being amused, 
nor are they amused ; but they depart 
with the amiable fiction upon their lips 
that they have had " such a delightful 
time." A certain well-bred hypocrisy is 
absolutely necessary to make social inter- 
course smooth and agreeable. It is one 
of the last results of civilization. The 
blunt sincerity of the frontiersman stamps 
him as a barbarian. Women of the Sarah 
Althea Hill variety flourish yet in the ex- 
treme West, and are typical of a semi- 
barbarous social condition. They are 
glaring illustrations of our social history 
which reveal more than would a hun- 
dred pages of eloquent text. But even in 
California that type of woman has ceased 
to excite admiration ; and when it is no 
longer admired it will soon become ex- 
tinct. I have heard Californians declare 
that it never had any existence except in 
the newspapers ; and of course I meekly 



acquiesced, knowing that Californians car- 
ry an incontrovertible argument in their 
hip pockets. But leaving that question 
an open one, it is safe to assert that the 
standard of conduct which demands self- 
restraint and repression of picturesque 
eccentricities is slowly travelling west- 
ward, and will ere long make us sigh for 
the dear old days of romance immortal- 
ized by Bret Harte and by the dime novel. 
There is, however, a type of American 
womanhood, by no means devoid of cis- 
atlantic flavor, which has nothing to fear 
from the march of civilization. She is in- 
deed an agent of civilization and a most 
powerful one. I met her for the first 
time in 1869, and have been meeting her 
daily ever since. Though she may ob- 
ject to the name, I shall call her the As- 
piring Woman, As a rule she is not 
handsome, and she is not conspicuous for 
taste in dress. She regards dress and all 
other things which have no bearing upon 
her intellectual development as being of 
slight consequence. It would be impos- 
sible to arouse her enthusiasm for a 
French bonnet, and the shrill little ejacu- 



lations of rapture in which other women 
compass a world of meaning (or the op- 
posite) are not found in her vocabulary. 
She rebukes you with a glance of mild 
reprobation if you indulge in " frivolous 
talk " or refer to any physical traits in a 
member of her sex. There is no affecta- 
tion in this ; it is rather the result of a 
long puritanic descent, and amounts to a 
second conscience. She knows the flesh 
only as something to be mortified, and 
though she may have abandoned the 
scriptural grounds for the mortification, 
she is, in the midst of her consciousness 
of evil, so good as almost to be able to 
dispense with the commandments. I have 
known her skeptical and I have known 
her religious ; but skepticism sat lightly 
upon her, like a divestible garment, and 
could not conceal her innate goodness. 
She is frequently anaemic, and in New 
England inclines to be flat-chested. The 
vigor of her physical life usually leaves 
much to be desired ; the poverty of diet 
in ascetic ancestors has often reduced her 
vitality, making her undervalue the con- 
cerns of the flesh, and overvalue the rel- 



ative importance of the things of the 
spirit. I purposely qualify these state- 
ments, and do not represent them as be- 
ing invariably true. The aspiring woman 
is so extensive and numerous a species 
that it naturally embraces many varieties. 
The variety I have described is a con- 
spicuous one, but it is not the only one. 
There is one trait, however, which they 
all have in common : they are all bent 
upon improving themselves, in season 
and out of season. When they indulge 
in anything frivolous, it is always from 
a utilitarian motive. Thus I remember 
once dancing a waltz with an aspiring 
young woman. It was at the Cornell 
University, at the season when the all- 
absorbing topic is the graduating thesis. 
Just as we swung out upon the floor she 
exploded this query in my ears : " Now, 
won't you be kind enough to give me, just 
in a few words, the gist of Spinoza's ' Eth- 
ics ' ?" It did not surprise me afterwards to 
learn that she danced because it was good 
for the digestion. And her dancing was 
what might have been expected ; it was a 
conscientious exercise. At every bar of the 



music she emphasized the time with a jerk, 
as if she were trying to help me along. 

If there is any single trait which radi- 
cally distinguishes American society, as 
a whole, from European society, it is 
a universal hopefulness and aspiration. 
The European Philistine, though he may 
not be content with his lot, rarely thinks 
of rising above the station to which he 
was born. Society appears so fixed and 
unyielding that it seems like presump- 
tion on his part to defy its prejudice. 
It requires a very exceptional courage, 
therefore, and talents of a high order, to 
aspire successfully. But in the United 
States aspiration is the rule, not the ex- 
ception. The man who is content to re- 
main what he is, who does not expect to 
rise to some dizzy height of wealth or of 
fame, was until recently a vara avis in 
the Western States. And as for the young 
women, they were animated by an am- 
bition which in many cases was pathetic. 
I met, during my sojourn in Ohio and 
Illinois, daughters of farmers and me- 
chanics who were cultivating themselves 
in secret, groping their way most piti- 



i6 



fully, without help or guidance, and often 
gulping the most abominable stuff under 
the impression that they were being in- 
tellectually nourished. 

The young woman who cultivates poet- 
ry under the most distressing circumstan- 
ces, and perhaps finally publishes a pitiful 
little volume at her own expense, is a butt 
for newspaper ridicule ; but to me she is a 
pathetic character. If there were not in 
her a spark of the Promethean fire, she 
would not expend so much vital energy 
and deluded hope, in the face of many 
discouragements, on her clumsy or in- 
sipid rhymes. She may, indeed, be a con- 
ceited pretender; but the probabilities 
are nine to one that she is something 
better. Having had no opportunities for 
culture beyond such as the district school 
offers, she has, of course, no chance of 
succeeding. A utilitarian would advise 
her to throw her verses into the fire, to 
tuck up her skirts, and to help her mother 
scrub, darn, and wash dishes. Such a 
counsellor would be worthy of attention. 
But, in the first place, he would find that 
the mother would object to the help (for 



she is, as a rule, proud of her daughter's 
unusual accomplishments); and, second- 
ly, something valuable would vanish out 
of American life, if all the misguided and 
largely futile aspiration were lost which 
constitutes the tragedy and the dignity 
of thousands of narrow, toilsome lives. 
When the failure is, at last, tacitly ac- 
knowledged and the hope of success aban- 
doned, something yet remains, which is 
beyond the reach of hostile critics and an 
indifferent public. This may be a mere 
heightened self-respect, with a touch of 
defiance, or it may be the lifting of the 
character to a higher plane than it would 
have reached without the futile aspira- 
tion. Women who have passed through 
an experience of this sort transfer, when 
they become mothers, their ambition to 
their children, and will make any sacrifice 
in the hope of enabling their sons to at- 
tain what they missed. It is a priceless 
blessing to a man to have had such a 
mother; and all over this country they 
are scattered in log-huts and farm-houses, 
in tenements and in brown-stone fronts. 
I have often endeavored, after each 



return from a European pilgrimage, to 
make clear to myself wherein the charm 
of American women consists. I do not 
mean the mere charm of womanhood, 
for that is universal ; but something su- 
peradded, depending upon climate and 
social conditions, which lends to it a 
heightened flavor, a more exquisite bou- 
quet. I have always sympathized with 
the perverter of Pope who declared that 
the noblest study of mankind is woman ; 
and of all womankind no variety better 
repays sympathetic and discriminating 
study than the American. For the pur- 
poses of the sociologist no less than those 
of the novelist, women are unquestion- 
ably more interesting than men ; and in 
particular, American women are more 
interesting than American men. As a 
leisured class (comparatively speaking), 
they have more time to cultivate the 
amenities of life than have their hus- 
bands and brothers. They read more ; 
and a larger proportion than will be found 
anywhere else in the world have inter- 
ests beyond dress and social tittle-tattle. 
Some few have vigorous, well-trained in- 



tellects, and naturally feel their superior- 
ity to the majority of men with whom 
they associate. They then rashly con- 
clude that women, as a rule, are the intel- 
lectual superiors of men, or would be if 
the same opportunities of education were 
afforded them ; and presently we find 
them in woman-suffrage conventions, pe- 
titioning legislatures and agitating for 
social reform. Far be it from me to throw 
ridicule upon these heroic protagonists, 
or to underestimate the value of their 
labors. Though I do not sympathize 
with some of their aims, I cannot but 
admire their intrepidity, their fortitude, 
their noble enthusiasm. The influence 
of their work is good, and we could ill 
afford to dispense with it. It is not to be 
denied, however, that they forfeit much 
of that charm which, in the present con- 
dition of the world, constitutes to the be- 
nighted male the chief attraction of the 
sex. 

I believe there is inherent in all women 
what may be called, without any invidious 
inference, a yearning for the common- 
place — for the normal lot. Those who 



protest most strenuously against the in- 
justice of society to their sex, are as a rule 
willing to exchange their uncomfortable 
prominence for the contented obscurity 
of a domestic hearth. If it were possible 
to explore their innermost hearts, I be- 
lieve it would be found that they have an 
underlying respect, not to say fondness, 
for the tyranny which they justly de- 
nounce. Madame de Stael's willingness 
to exchange all her fame and intellectual 
superiority for Madame de Recamier's 
gift of pleasing, is the most profoundly 
womanly trait recorded of that brilliant 
amazon. In the correspondence of George 
Eliot, too, there is a regretful acceptance 
of the eminence that is thrust upon her; 
and in her personal life a kind of re- 
versed aspiration is perceptible, a yearn- 
ing for the ordinary ties of ordinary wom- 
en — for love, dependence, self-surrender. 
The apparent aberrations of her career 
are easily accounted for on this hypoth- 
esis. 

As regards this fundamental character- 
istic, American women do not differ from 
their sisters the world over. The point 



in which they do differ is chiefly a certain 
intellectual alertness, an adaptability, a 
readiness to apply their minds quickly 
to any new topic, a mental resonance 
which responds promptly to a deft touch. 
This accounts largely for the charm 
they exercise over foreigners. The pro- 
portion of truly delightful women, well- 
bred, sympathetic, and intelligent, is 
larger in the best society of our great 
cities than in society of a corresponding 
grade in England, France, or Germany. 
In stateliness, dignity, and finish of man- 
ner, the aristocracy of the old world nat- 
urally excel them ; but it is marvellous to 
observe the readiness with which, when 
they marry noblemen, they adapt them- 
selves to their new surroundings and beat 
"the daughters of a hundred earls" on 
their own ground. They become ^or^a^ides 
frames in an incredibly short time.yet with- 
out losing their American cleverness, deli- 
cacy, and piquancy of style. Some of the 
grandest ladies one meets inVienna, Paris, 
Berlin, and London, the sight of whom 
awakens a sneaking admiration for feu- 
dalism and a dim disloyalty to the Declara- 



tion of Independence, turn out, on inquiry, 
to be transplanted American heiresses. 
And yet no one would have believed, 
without proof to the contrary, that this 
combination of graciousness and dignity, 
these delicate gradations of cordiality and 
reserve, this consummate skill in dealing 
with nice questions of etiquette, could 
have sprung from the soil of democracy. 
American ladies at home, though their 
native tact usually comes to their rescue, 
rarely possess in the same degree this 
adroitness. We have not yet gotten 
through the imitative stage in our social 
customs and observances, and no one 
who has an alien model in view can be- 
have with perfect naturalness and secur- 
ity. The English yoke sits heavily upon 
that part of New York society which 
claims to be "the best," and upon the 
girls in particular. That distressing hand- 
shake, with the elbow raised at an angle 
of ninety degrees, is one of the recent im- 
portations. The rule not to introduce, for 
which we are also indebted to London, 
is another heavy incubus, which strangles 
conversation and produces awkwardness 



and misery. But the women who make it 
a point to be abreast of London in all these 
more or less arbitrary observances are ap- 
parently unaware that they are robbing 
themselves of their highest charm when 
they are no longer frankly American. It 
is their national flavor, refined by intelli- 
gence and culture, which makes them a 
power both at home and abroad ; and 
they should have the courage to be proud 
of this nationality, and to show their 
pride in it by abandoning their attitude 
of social dependence upon Great Britain. 
1890 




GERMAN AND AMERICAN 
WOMEN 

CYNICAL friend of mine, 
who is a bachelor, once made 
an observation which cHngs 
likeaburrto my memory. It 
had always appeared a sig- 
nificant circumstance to him, he said, that 
God, when "he saw all that he had made, 
and, behold, it was very good," had not yet 
created woman. After her appearance 
upon the scene, the goodness of creation 
might be rationally questioned. At all 
events, the Bible is silent on the subject. 
I ought, perhaps, to add that my cynical 
friend is a German, and that, if he had 
been an American, he would — well, he 
would not have had the courage of his 
conviction. He would never have dared 
to utter so heterodox an opinion. The 
United States, as we all know, is the 



25 



women's paradise, and they have a thou- 
sand ingenious ways of mailing life a bur- 
den to the man who has the audacity not 
to admire them, I would rather that a 
millstone were tied about my neck, and 
that I were sunk in the depths of the sea, 
than court the terrors of such a fate. 
Therefore I shield myself judiciously be- 
hind the back of my cynical friend, with 
whose opinions, I beg to state, 1 have not 
the remotest sympathy. I dare say he 
had been jilted, which, to the feminine 
mind, is a sufficient cause for all vagaries 
of conduct and sentiment. However, it 
may be urged as an ameliorating circum- 
stance, that (though a German-American) 
he had known chiefly his own country- 
women, and the few specimenc of the 
American woman with whom he had 
come in contact had been of that no- 
madic species which one meets in second- 
class family hotels and boarding-houses. 
I don't blame any man for questioning the 
rationality of creation after having been 
doomed, for four years, to such compan- 
ionship. But, of course, I was too chival- 
rous to make such an admission to this 



26 



Teutonic traducer of American woman- 
hood ; and accordingly I found myself 
launched, before long, in a hot debate on 
the comparative merits of German and 
American women. To quote it verbatim 
would be an endless task ; but it had the 
effect of stimulating my mind to grapple 
with this subject — and it is terrible what 
an amount of reflection may be expended 
upon it without the least palpable result. 
I shall, however, venture to present a few 
vague and extremely shadowy conclusions, 
from which I shall instantly recede, if any 
fair reader objects to them. And she — the 
fair reader — will kindly bear in mind that 
all that is uncomplimentary to her sex in 
the following dissertation is due to the 
jaundiced cynicism of my crude Teutonic 
friend ; while all of which she may be 
pleased to approve is due solely and ex- 
clusiv^ely to my own genial and intelli- 
gent observation. 

Well, then, the American society girl 
{cym'cus loqitititr) is brought up without 
any adequate sense of duty. She is made 
to believe or to infer from the attitude of 
her environment, that the chief business 



of life is to amuse one's self ; and that the 
day is to be counted as lost which does 
not afford some new pleasurable excite- 
ment. Mothers, who have themselves 
known the inestimable discipline of hard- 
ship and toil, have a natural desire to 
make their daughters' youth brighter and 
happier than was their own ; and by this 
generous motive they are impelled to in- 
troduce a ruinous laxity into their rela- 
tions with their children. The dear girls 
must have a good time, at all hazards ; 
and their pleasure and convenience must 
be consulted above all else. The father 
and the mother sacrifice themselves to 
this end, and fondly imagine that they 
are furthering their daughters' welfare by 
removing every stone out of their path. 
As a consequence, they rear beautiful 
little monsters of selfishness and con- 
ceit, who at the proper age trip sweet- 
ly into matrimony with a thousand de- 
mands, and without the least conception 
of the serious duties which that relation 
imposes upon them. When the husband 
fails to subordinate himself (as he is very 
apt to do) with the same willingness as 



papa and mamma did, to the whims and 
caprices of his young wife — particularly 
if he fails to provide amusements enough, 
regardless of expense— then follow weep- 
ing and wailing and possibly also gnashing 
of teeth ; little scenes are enacted (in strict 
privacy at first) in which neither party is 
apt to appear to advantage; and trouble 
rises, like a great blood-red moon, with an 
ominous face, on the matrimonial horizon. 
The postulate that women should^be in- 
dependent and the equals of men sounds 
eminently fair. But when two such in- 
dependents marry, they are sure to get 
into collision. One or the other must 
surrender a portion of his independence, 
or retire from the partnership. It is a 
most deplorable fact that so many choose 
the latter alternative, and thereby do their 
share towards undermining the founda- 
tions of society. Men and women are no 
less fit, by nature, for the married state 
here than elsewhere ; but the utterly lax 
and slipshod education, more particularly 
of young women, is responsible for the 
ruin which overtakes so large a percent- 
age of American households. I am — 



that is to say, my German friend was — old- 
fashioned enough to believe that there 
are no privileges which do not also in- 
volve duties; and that it is far more im- 
portant to impress a young person, of 
either sex, with a consciousness of the 
latter than of the former. I never knew 
any one, breathing the air of our democ- 
racy, who did not, without much guid- 
ance, discover what society owed to him ; 
but I have known a great many who had 
only the dimmest notions of their own 
obligations towards society. 

Now, in Germany, the situation is, in 
some respects, exactly the opposite. 
There women have the acutest percep- 
tion of the very things which American 
women largely lack. They arc trained 
from childhood in ideas which we regard 
as mediaeval, and from which we emanci- 
pated ourselves in 1789 or thereabouts. 
First, the German maidens regard wife- 
hood and motherhood as their legitimate 
vocation ; and they have a veritable hor- 
ror of anything that savors of " woman's 
rights." They do not ask for the omis- 
sion of the " obey " from the marriage 



service (as a fair friend of mine did); nor 
do they interpret it in a Pickwickian 
sense, as another charming damsel of my 
acquaintance professed to have done, 
when she was reminded of the odious 
little verbs which she had been beguiled 
into uttering. Ah, but the German wom- 
en — what else can you expect of them ? 
They are so palpably inferior to their 
husbands ; and moreover, they dress atro- 
ciously, remarks a soprano voice at my 
elbow. Granted. They are far less com- 
plex than their American sisters ; they 
are less highly developed ; they have not 
(unless they are very high up in the so- 
cial scale) half the alertness of mind, 
facility of address, or independence of 
thought. They are bound by a rigid so- 
cial tradition, which our women repudi- 
ate. They glory in their domestic martyr- 
dom, their sacrifice of self, their loving 
and conscientious performance of their 
duties to husband and children. But, al- 
though one may admit that they are not 
individually as charming as American 
women in the corresponding social po- 
sition, it is a question which admits of 



different replies, whether they do not, 
other things being equal, make better 
wives and better mothers than — than — 
the ladies on the planet Jupiter. The 
sentiment of home, which is chiefly fos- 
tered by the mother, certainly exists in a 
higher and intenser degree in Germany 
than it does here ; the domestic ties mean 
more, and are regarded with a deeper re- 
spect. Look at Kaulbach's illustrations 
to Schiller's Song of the Bell, and you will 
see how they are permeated with this sen- 
timent of the sanctity of home, and what 
a tender poetic afflatus dignifies and en- 
nobles all the typical incidents of family 
life. What can be lovelier than the car- 
toon entitled " The Mother's Instruction," 
which exhales a breath of all that is sweet- 
est and best in the German Fatherland } 
I wish it were natural to exclaim, at the 
sight of such a scene, " How American !" 
instead of being obliged to say, " How 
German !" 

The fundamental trait of German wonr- 
anhood is— not intellectual brilliancy, not 
readiness of resource or practical sense, 
but self-sacrificing goodness of heart. 



We who are accustomed to more high- 
ly-flavored peculiarities are inclined to 
misjudge this kind of quiet, unobtrusive 
goodness, and so undervalue the sterling 
virtues which it conceals. But what alien- 
ates us still more is a certain sentimen- 
tal effusiveness and exuberance of feeling, 
which lie as remote as possible from the 
Anglo-Saxon temperament. What we 
fear above all things is to make ourselves 
ridiculous; and every exhibition of emo- 
tion has to us, unhappily, a lurking sug- 
gestion of the ridiculous. We, therefore, 
repress ourselves until we are in danger 
of becoming insincere and unnatural from 
sheer dread of compromising our pre- 
cious dignity. Now, the Germans, and 
particularly the German women, are never 
in the least troubled with this question of 
the ridiculous. They have, I verily be- 
lieve, a depression in their craniums 
where the bump of humor ought to have 
been situated ; which, of course, saves a 
deal of discomfort. But, as a compensa- 
tion, they possess the correlative virtue 
in which our society women, both old and 
young, are conspicuously lacking. I mean 



33 



a capacity for seriousness. What can be 
more distressing to a man, who has out- 
grown his first, callow youth, than the 
perpetual chaff and banter in which he 
is expected to indulge in his intercourse 
with ladies? I have felt positively mur- 
derous at times, after having spent an 
evening in the company of fair enchant- 
resses, who insisted upon being funny and 
seeing a lurking joke in every remark 
which I uttered. Now, I dare say I en- 
joy a good joke as much as any one ; but 
humor, which affords a delightful season- 
ing to conversation, becomes distaste- 
ful and unwholesome as a steady diet. 
Forced jesting, coupled with that ner- 
vous, half- hysterical vivacity which w^e 
all know so well, serves but to disguise 
poverty of thought. It is either because 
our young women have no capacity for 
serious thinking, or because they distrust 
the capacity which they possess, that they 
seek refuge in this imbecile jocularity. 

I am speaking, of course, of society 
women ; for I am well aware that, in 
the strata below, the humorous aspect 
of life is in no danger of predominating. 

3 



Nor am I blind to the fact that, within 
the society which I am criticising, there 
are many lovely and brilliant women, who 
incline me to thank God daily for the 
privilege of having been born their con- 
temporary. But these are radiant excep- 
tions which prove the rule. An over- 
whelming majority of the women who 
figure at routs, dinners, and balls seem 
shallov/ in heart and brain ; and they 
lack, moreover, that supreme charm of 
womanly dignity which covers all minor 
imperfections with a mantle of grace. 
They dress extremely well ; far better 
than a similar assemblage would be like- 
ly to do in any other part of the world. 
They are superficially clever, and adapt 
themselves with great readiness to any 
situation. But you will find, if you pene- 
trate beneath their outer armor of con- 
ventionality, a certain dryness and pov- 
erty of nature, a comparative absence 
of those warm, sweet, fundamentally 
womanly qualities which are the strength 
and the glory of womanhood ; and in their 
stead a host of petty and obtrusive little 
vanities ; a grim, hard-headed selfishness 



35 

and worldly calculation, which is deter- 
mined to get the most out of life with 
the least possible sacrifice ; and an essen- 
tial fiimsiness of character which makes 
them incapable of noble motives and dis- 
interested actions. This is the sort of 
women whose lives are filled with so- 
called social duties ; /. ^..visiting, person- 
al gossip, strife for precedence, snubs to 
supposed inferiors, flattering attention to 
superiors, and vain and mean ambitions 
that would scarcely seem worth the ex- 
penditure of one -tenth of the energy 
which they demand. They go to church, 
too, chiefly as a matter of form, and fig- 
ure conspicuously among the patrons of 
fashionable charities. But the spirit which 
should sanctify the deed is so glaringly 
absent, that the deed itself loses whatever 
virtue it might otherwise possess. 

It is the system of education to which 
I have alluded, or rather the lack of sys- 
tem, which is responsible for the preva- 
lence of this type. It is the combination 
of lax indulgence and neglect on the part 
of the parents — indulgence as regards 
material comforts, and neglect as regards 



36 



spiritual guidance and the training of 
character — which produces these fair, 
heartless sirens, whom we meet at New- 
port, Bar Harbor, and Narragansett Pier, 
whose shrill song is, however, apt to 
allure to perdition only men of their own 
species, unless indeed they be very young. 
Now, my cynical friend (whose opin- 
ions I have been quoting) has the audacity 
to maintain that the women in the upper 
strata of German society are finer and 
nobler specimens of their sex than Amer- 
ican women of the corresponding posi- 
tion. (I have long been pondering wheth- 
er I ought to challenge him to fight with 
pistols or with swords, unless he consents 
to withdraw this offensive remark; and 
as I shoot better than I fence, I am slowly 
gravitating towards the more deadly weap- 
on. In the meanwhile, I am in hopes 
that he will repent of his rudeness and 
recant.) But, as I was saying, he has the 
hardihood to insinuate that the German 
girls of to-day, themselves the result of 
conscientious education and often of stern 
discipline, are more impressive phenom- 
ena in their blonde innocence and Spar- 



tan simplicity of life than our pretty, flim- 
sy, pampered, and self-willed daughters 
of wealth and enervating luxury. These 
girls, he says, will make noble mothers, 
and happy are the sons whom they shall 
tenderly guide with affectionate severity 
and far-seeing love to a pure and vigor- 
ous manhood. Of course, distance has 
lent its enchantment to this picture and 
is, in part, responsible for its poetic tint. 
There is this to be said, on the other 
side, that a man has to make his choice 
among these girls largely on trust ; for, 
with all their virtues, they are a trifle 
insipid, until wifehood and motherhood 
have awakened their latent character- 
istics. They are distressingly alike, both 
in their outward type and in their senti- 
ments ; and they rarely develop an inter- 
esting individuality until after marriage, 
or after they have given up the expecta- 
tion of marriage. For the male species 
as we all know, are afraid of anything of 
definite complexion, preferring a mere 
personification of the venerable and tra- 
ditional qualities which are supposed to 
be inherent in the sex. The German 



38 



male would even count it a gain if lie 
could arrest all individual development 
in his wife for an indefinite period. And 
it is inevitable that this ideal of blank- 
ness, feebly tinted by a few traditional 
virtues, will be reflected in the mind and 
demeanor of German girlhood. For when 
the penalty of not conforming to this 
ideal is celibacy, women will strive to ap- 
pear what men want them to be. But, in 
spite of this effort at self -obliteration, 
there are women in Germany who are as 
pronounced personalities as Bismarck or 
Von Moltke. I recall one, the wife of a 
celebrated professor and political leader, 
with whose acquaintance I would not 
have dispensed for a small fortune. To 
see her sit at her table, tall, blond, and 
stately, surrounded by her sons and 
daughters, who loved and almost revered 
her, was a picture never to be forgotten. 
The father, though he was a man of ex- 
ceptional gifts and absorbed in public af- 
fairs, seemed to me almost dwarfed by his 
wife. Her sweet, maternal dignity, her 
innate courtesy, her easy flow of interest- 
ing conversation, made her seem to me 



the noblest type of a matron I had ever 
beheld, and she revealed to me, incident- 
ally, an ideal of family life which remains 
to this day something unattainable. 
Though she was the dominant force in 
the household, she deferred to her hus- 
band with a loving delight in submission 
which was beautiful to witness. She was 
proud of him and missed no opportunity 
to make her children proud of him. And 
she seemed utterly unconscious that she 
was herself exceptional, unless it were for 
her good-fortune in being the wife of such 
a husband and the mother of so many 
fine children. Let m.e add that she was 
intensely Prussian in sentiment, loyal to 
the core, and an admirer of Bismarck. If 
she had been a contemporary of Plutarch, 
he would have included her eventless life 
among his heroic biographies. 

My domestic critic, to whom I have 
read the above, declares her disapproba- 
tion in general, and calls my attention to 
the fact that all generalizations must con- 
tain a modicum of error. It is because I 
cheerfully grant this proposition that I 
finish this study of odious comparisons, 



not with a generalization, but with a por- 
trait. Whether I have succeeded in hold- 
ing the scales of international justice even 
I do not know ; nor do I pretend to 
be wholly unbiassed. But my prejudice 
(though you may find it hard to believe) 
is in favor of America and whatever is 
American. 



THE AMERICAN NOVELIST 
AND HIS PUBLIC 




i)T is said that poets are born, 
not made. The same asser- 
tion might be hazarded, with 
equal truth, of lawyers, engi- 
neers, doctors, and clergy- 
men ; in fact, of any man eminent in his 
profession. The great ones are born, the 
little ones are only made. Marked in- 
herited ability in a definite direction is, 
however, no sure guarantee of greatness. 
Circumstances must do the rest. The 
man is the resultant of his environment 
and his heredity; if they impel him in the 
same direction, he will get far ; if they 
push in opposite directions and counter- 
act each other, he may not get anywhere. 
The one is as important as the other. A 
man's heredity he has to accept as an un- 
alterable fact; he can do nothing to im- 



prove or modify it; though I believe the 
time will come when society will awake 
to a sense of its responsibility and pre- 
vent unions which must result in vicious 
or diseased offspring. As regards en- 
vironment, we have already accepted the 
responsibility. In our power to change 
and modify it so as to serve a definite 
purpose, we have, if not our own fates, at 
least those of our children, partly in our 
hands. Much is, of course, yet beyond 
our power of calculation ; but much, also, 
within it. The late Anthony Trollope's 
idea, that a young man could be trained 
to be a novelist, as he might for the legal 
or medical profession, is, therefore, not 
so absurd as it has been represented to 
be. Supposing the young man to be of 
a little more than average cleverness, he 
would have as good a chance of success 
in that field as in that of law or medicine. 
He could not, perhaps, go to work de- 
liberately accumulating experience, but 
he could, by a process similar to that 
which Goethe employed in his own con- 
scious self-development, educate himself 
by travel and study, and sharpen his fac- 



43 



ulties of observation. He might not be- 
come great by this process, but if success 
were conditioned by greatness, how many 
of us would indeed achieve it? That 
greatness may even be a barrier to success 
is demonstrated by the posthumous ce- 
lebrity of many an author, who asked for 
bread and received a stone. 

The public makes its authors in its 
own image and likeness. It demands a 
certain article and it gets it. The man 
who suits the average taste is the suc- 
cessful man. There is, to be sure, such a 
thing as educating your public; but the 
process is slow and expensive. The pub- 
lic which is capable of being educated 
is never very large, though it is apt to 
make up in devotion for what it lacks in 
numbers. The authors, however, who are 
satisfied with this limited renown are ex- 
ceptional ; the great majority of them 
hunger for popularity. For the attain- 
ment of this a benevolent chorus is an 
important aid. The journalistic friends 
of the novelist conspire to advertise him, 
in season and out of season, and treat his 
greatness as an article of faith ; and he, 



in return, pushes their fortunes when- 
ever the chance presents itself. 

If this were, however, the severest symp- 
tom of the hunger for popularity, it would 
be no serious matter; the influence of 
these little cliques is, after all, limited ; 
and there are plenty of reputations among 
us which have grown healthily without 
such artificial tending. But there are 
other forces at work, in our literature, 
which are more permanently injurious. 
Chief among these I hold to be the fact 
that the American public, as far as the 
novelist is concerned, is the female half 
of it. The readers of novels are chiefly 
young girls, and a popular novel is a 
novel which pleases them. If an Ameri- 
can author should attempt to write fiction 
for men, his books would share the fate 
of Rousseau's " Ode to Posterity," which 
never reached its address. The average 
American has no time to read anything 
but newspapers, while his daughters have 
an abundance of time at their disposal, 
and a general disposition to employ it in 
anything that is amusing. The novelist 
who has begun to realize that these young 



persons constitute his public, naturally 
endeavors to amuse them. He knows, in 
a general way, what ladies like, and as 
the success of his work depends upon his 
hitting their taste, he makes a series of 
small concessions to it, which, in the end, 
determines the character of his book. He 
feels that he is conversing with ladies and 
not with men, and his whole attitude, his 
style, and the topics he selects for dis- 
cussion, suffer the change which is im- 
plied in this circumstance. He discusses 
dress with elaborate minuteness, and en- 
ters, with a truly feminine enthusiasm, 
into the mysteries of the toilet. He shuns 
large questions and problems because his 
audience is chiefly interested in small 
questions and problems. He avoids 
everything which requires thought, be- 
cause, rightly or wrongly, thought is not 
supposed to be the ladies' forte. Their 
education has not trained them for inde- 
pendent reflection. They are by nature 
conservative, and have been told by their 
pastors and teachers that the so-called 
modern ideas are dangerous and improper 
to discuss. Accordingly, the novelist who 



46 



aspires for their favor becomes, also, con- 
servative, and refrains from discussing 
what, according to the boarding-school 
standard, is unsafe or improper. 

This silence concerning all the vital 
things of life, and the elaborate attention 
paid to things of small consequence, I be- 
lieve to be the most serious defect in the 
present American fiction. The strong 
forces which are visibly and invisibly at 
work in our society, fashioning our desti- 
nies as a nation, are to a great extent ig- 
nored by our novelists. Politics, for in- 
stance, which, outside of the great cities, 
plays so large a part in the lives of our 
people, is, out of deference to the ladies, 
rarely allowed to invade our novels. In 
all the tales of Howells and James, which 
are typical of the tendencies of the time, 
I do not remember a single political inci- 
dent — unless, indeed, the flirtations of 
the capricious Christina with the little 
socialistic bookbinder in Princess Casa- 
inassiina may be termed a political inci- 
dent. Mr. Marion Crawford had, to be 
sure, once the hardihood to advertise his 
misinformation concerning the politics of 



his native land in a book entitled An 
American Politician, but I doubt if he 
expected any one to take such a perform- 
ance seriously. J. W. De Forest pub- 
lished, some ten or twelve years ago, an 
excellent political novel, showing abun- 
dant insight; but Hojiest John Vane can 
scarcely have reaped the success it de- 
served, since the author soon afterwards 
abandoned the field of fiction, and has, 
as far as I know, never since been heard 
from. In Edward Eggleston's /?^-r)/ there 
are admirable episodes from the Harri- 
son and Tyler campaign of 1840, and in 
T/ie Hoosier Schoolmaster politics also 
holds its due proportion of space and 
interest. But these exceptions are suf- 
ficiently rare to prove the rule, that the 
novelist of to-day avoids politics. Of the 
anonymous novel, Democracy, I have not 
spoken, because it was not what it pur- 
ported to be — a characterization of life 
at our national capital — but a distorting 
and malevolent satire on it ; and Albion 
J. Tourgee's A Fool's Errand and Bricks 
Without Straw were so strongly colored 
by vindictive partisanship as to be cam- 



48 



paign documents rather than contribu- 
tions to literature. 

I am aware that it is ungracious, on the 
part of a man who has written novels, to 
find fault with those who have had the 
kindness to read his productions. It 
would be perfectly fair if they should an- 
swer him : " If we had not been your 
public you would have had none; if we 
had not bought your books they would 
have remained on the shelves of your 
publisher. Whatever you are, or pretend 
to be, in a literary capacity, you owe to 
us." As I have said, I am painfully 
aware that such a reply would be in or- 
der, and I scarcely know what to say to 
clear myself of the charge of ingratitude. 
My only plea is that I care more for 
American literature than for the small 
figure I may happen to cut in it. I con- 
fess I have never written a book without 
helplessly deploring the fact that young 
ladies were to be the arbiters of its fate ; 
that young persons whose opinions on 
any other subject, involving the need of 
thought or experience, we should proba- 
bly hold in light esteem, constitute col- 



lectively an Areopagus from whose judg- 
ments, in matters relating to fiction, there 
is no appeal. To be a purveyor of amuse- 
ment (especially if one suspects that he 
has the stuff in him for something better) 
is not at all amusing. To be obliged to 
repress that which is best in him, and 
offer that which is of slight consequence, 
is the plight to which many a novelist, 
in this paradise of women, is reduced. 
Nothing less is demanded of him by that 
inexorable force called public taste, as 
embodied in the editors of the paying 
magazines, behind whom sits, arrayed in 
stern and bewildering loveliness, his final 
judge, the young American girl. She is 
the Iron Madonna w^ho strangles in her 
fond embrace the American novelist ; the 
Moloch upon whose altar he sacrifices, 
willingly or unwillingly, his chances of 
greatness. In the vast majority of cases 
in which the chances do not exist, there 
is, of course, no sacrifice. But in the 
cases where they do exist there is a dis- 
tinct half-unconscious lowering of stand- 
ard, a distinct descent to a lower plane 
of thought or thoughtlessness. A weak 



5° 



lemonade mixture, harmless and mildly 
exhilarating, adapted for the palates of 
ingenues, is poured out in a steady stream 
from our presses, and we all drink it, and, 
from patriotic motives, declare it to be 
good. When, however, we read a novel 
like ToXsioVs Ajina Karcjiina or Daudet's 
Le Nabab we appreciate, perhaps, the dif- 
ference between a literature addressed to 
girls and a literature intended for men 
and women. 

I am by no means blind to the fact that 
we have among us the beginning of what 
promises to be a sounder and more se- 
rious school of fiction. Mr. Howells de- 
serves, in my opinion, the thanks of all 
lovers of literature for his frank and fear^ 
less attacks, both by precept and example, 
upon the worn-out romantic ideals. As 
long as it is expected of the novelist that 
he shall spin ingenious and entertaining 
yarns, his art is not bound by the laws of 
reality, and is free to degenerate into all 
sorts of license. As long as a crude pub- 
lic taste found more pleasure in the ab- 
normal than the normal, the popular 
novelist was forced, like Wilkie Collins 



and Gaboriau, to ransack the records of 
police courts and lunatic asylums in 
search of startling incidents ; and the 
novel swarmed with villains and their 
victims. As a picture of life, such fiction 
was worse than worthless. It exists, of 
course, yet, and has a large public ; but 
it is, in great part, due to Mr. Howells 
that readers who lay claim to literary cult- 
ure are now beginning to repudiate it. 
His long series of novels in the Atlantic, 
the Century, and Harper s Magazine, have 
dealt uniformly with American themes, 
and have drawn within the domain of 
fiction hitherto unexplored types and 
phases of our national life. In A Hazard 
of New Fortunes and The Rise of Silas 
Laphain he has penetrated more deeply 
into the heart of reality, as it manifests 
itself on this side of the Atlantic, than 
any previous novelist, and has made it 
easier for those who shall follow after him 
to rely upon insight, style, and knowl- 
edge of the world for success, and to 
dispense with the crude devices of the 
sensationalist. If he has not, like Zola 
and Claretie in France, and Spielhagen 



and Freytag in Germany, undertaken to 
grapple with the social problems of the 
day, this may be in part due to a tem- 
peramental aversion for polemics, and 
partly to the training which the month- 
ly magazine gives to all its contribu- 
tors, keeping them in the safe track of un- 
contested generalities.* The editor, being 
anxious to keep all his old subscribers 
and secure new ones, requires of his con- 
tributor that he shall ofTend no one. He 
must not expose a social or religious 
sham, because there are hundreds, if not 
thousands, of subscribers who believe in 
this sham, and would stop the magazine 
if it were attacked. If he takes up a par- 
ticular phase of life, he must steer care- 
fully, so as to step on nobody's toes, and 
if he has extreme beliefs and convictions, 
take good care to keep them in proper 
restraint. I am not applying this to Mr. 
Howells, who is sufficiently outspoken 
in his convictions, but to every novelist 

* Since the above was written Mr. Howells has pub- 
lished Letters from Aliruria, in which he does show 
the keenest appreciation of the problems of American 
society. 



who reaches his public through the mC' 
dium of the monthly magazines. How- 
ev^er much he may rebel against it, he is 
forced to chew the cud of old ideas, and 
avoid espousing any cause which lacks 
the element of popularity. If he is of an 
ardent temperament, he must curb his 
ardor, except in the love-scenes, where he 
is permitted to be discreetly passionate. 
If, like so many of the world's best poets, 
he is in advance of his time; if he is a 
non-conformist in respect to any com- 
monly accepted practice or belief, he has 
but the choice of suppressing his convic- 
tions or remaining silent. He must oflfer 
that part of himself which he believes to 
be of small consequence, and conceal that 
which he believes to be important and 
vital. 

In all the countries of Europe, except 
England, the literary conditions are, in 
this respect, very different. There the 
monthly magazine (without which Ameri- 
can authorship scarcely could exist) has 
not attained the prominence or the devel- 
opment that it has reached in our pros- 
perous democracy. The majority of the 



German periodicals appeal to a definite 
class of readers, and are not afraid of 
proclaiming (in signed articles) the most 
tremendous social and religious here- 
sies. Publications lii<e the Garienlatibe 
and Westerviaiins Deutsche Monatshefte, 
which are especially addressed to the 
prosperous bourgeoisie, exact the same 
conservatism of their contributors as do 
our magazines; but the Deutsche Rund- 
schau obviously emulates the Revice des 
Deux Mondes in the scope it gives to 
radical opinions, as long as the literary 
excellence is sufficient to keep the tale or 
discussion on a high intellectual plane. 
The consequence is that the Gartenlaiibe 
has developed a peculiar kind of female 
novelist, of which Marlitt, Werner, and 
Fanny Lewald were the most conspicu- 
ous representatives. They are safe, con- 
servative, and romantic ; and, according- 
ly, very popular in translation with the 
patrons of our circulating libraries. Writ- 
ers like Spielhagen, Freytag, Wildenbruch, 
and Sudermann, on the other hand, pre- 
fer to seek their first publicity in the 
feuilletoiis of the daily papers, which im- 



pose no restraints upon them in the in. 
terest of tender readers. Accordingly, 
we have in Spielhagen a most vigorous 
discussion of the great social questions 
from the point of view of a bold and 
original thinker ; fearless expositions of 
the influence of the aristocracy upon the 
State at large and the lower classes ; in- 
imitable satires on the official orthodoxy 
and its exponents, the Lutheran clergy. 
Everywhere there are vigor, originality, a 
fresh and contagious radicalism. 

In France the supply of excellent fic- 
tion so far exceeds the capacity of the 
few good magazines that the editorial 
opinion of the latter exerts but a very 
slight influence upon the novelist, and 
the daily papers like Le Temps, Le/oicrjial 
des Debuts, etc., which regularly print fic- 
tion in their feidlleions, allow a man of 
recognized ability to say whatever he 
likes, if he only says it well. The Revue 
des Deux M on des, indeed, exacts few but 
literary qualifications of its writers of fic- 
tion ; and even George Sand, the most 
gifted and most erratic of social revo- 
lutionists, was for five years its most 



56 



valued contributor. She quarrelled, to 
be sure, with the Revue, started, succes- 
sively, two periodicals of her own, and 
found, finally, her sphere in the absolute 
and congenial unrestraint of X.hefeitz7/efon. 
Daudet, Zola, and Claretie likewise revel 
in the liberty which the daily press allows 
them, and develop there, for good or for 
ill, to the full limit of their individualities. 
The recent literary history of the Scan- 
dinavian countries, where the magazine 
only exists in a primitive stage of de- 
velopment, shows the same tendency to 
make the novel the vehicle of advanced 
thought. All the vital questions of the day, 
in religion, politics, and society, are be- 
ing vigorously expounded and debated in 
works of fiction. Bjornson, who launches 
his books upon the market without the 
intervention of any paper or periodical, 
has published a novel {Flags are Flying 
zn Harbor and Ctfy^) in which he intro- 
duces successively four generations of 
the same family, for the purpose of illus- 
trating the psychological and physiologi- 

* The English translation is entitled The Heritage of 
the Knrts. 



cal laws of heredity in their mutual in- 
ter-dependence, and enforcing the moral 
lessons which are involved therein. Alex- 
ander Kielland diagnoses with dispassion- 
ate serenity and truth the hidden diseases 
of the body social, and by his keen and bit- 
ing satire arouses against himself a storm 
of denunciation. So far from suffering 
by thus being made the battle-field of 
warring thought, the novel gains thereby 
a breadth and dignity which it never can 
attain where it is constructed with a sole 
view to entertainment. The old maxim, 
ra7't pour I'ar/— art for art's sake — origi- 
nated with the romanticists, and is losing 
whatever validity it ever had. Art can 
engage in no better pursuit than to stimu- 
late noble and healthful thougiit on all 
matters of human concern, and thereby 
clear the prejudiced mind and raise the 
average of human happiness. 
1886 




THE PROGRESSIVE REALISM 
OF AMERICAN FICTION 

)N a letter to his friend Zelter 
(Vol. IV., p. 343), Goethe, in 
his disgust at the extrava- 
gances of the Romantic 
School, quotes a verse, which 
he has just written, prophetic of the fut- 
ure of American literature. Although 
it makes no claim to poetic merit, the 
sentiment which it expresses is sufficient- 
ly remarkable to deserve translation : 

America, thy happy lot 

Above old Europe's I exalt: 

Thou hast no castle ruin hoar 

No giant columns of basalt. 

Thy soul is not troubled 

In living light of day 

By useless traditions, 

Vain strife and affray. 

Grasp but the present that is thine. 

And when thy children take to writing. 

May kindly Fate preserve their tales 

From robbers, knights, and ghosts affrighting. 



59 



I fancy Goethe must have been aware 
when he wrote this verse (June 21, 1827) 
that the Americans had ah-eady taken to 
writing, and that their famous novelist, 
James Fenimore Cooper, was treading 
this very path from which he hoped that 
kindly Fate would preserve him. Knights 
and ruined castles he was, to be sure, by 
the necessities of the case, forced to es- 
chew ; but I doubt not that he regarded 
it as a dire deprivation. Robbers, red 
and white, are his stock characters, and, 
if I remember rightly, he also dealt in 
ghosts. Edgar Allan Poe revelled in 
horrors, and our other pioneer novelist, 
Charles Brockden Brown, of Philadelphia, 
had all the qualities which would have 
recommended him to Goethe's particular 
detestation, being slipshod in style and 
exhibiting a sovereign disregard of reality. 
His works abound in psychological curi- 
osities and superingenious mysteries, ex- 
ulting, like those of his romantic com- 
peers, in all the calamities from which 
in the Prayer Book we ask God to de- 
liver us. 

From the romanticism of Brown and 



6o 



Poe to that of Hawthorne, who chrono- 
logically follows the latter as the next 
notable dispenser of American fiction, we 
take a long stride forward. Brown's 
productions belonged to the family of 
Mrs. RadclifTe and Goodwin, and owned 
only the airiest allegiance to American 
soil and climate. Hawthorne, on the 
other hand, was so distinctly a product 
of New England blood and environment, 
that he would have been absolutely in- 
conceivable in any other setting. As he 
disclaims, however, the title of novelist, 
preferring that of romancer, it would be 
unfair to measure him by any standard 
of mere fidelity to fact. 

He says, in the preface to The House of 
the Seven Gables : 

" When a writer calls his work a Ro- 
mance, it need hardly be observed that 
he wishes to claim a certain latitude, 
both as to its fashion and material, which 
he would not have felt entitled to assume 
had he professed to be writing a novel." 

This very romance, however, has, with 
all its fanciful psychology, so unmistak- 
able a New England flavor as almost to 



make ihe disclaimer of the preface super- 
fluous. Though the human conscience, 
with its mysterious heritage of sin and 
woe, was his theme, the spiritual climate 
in which his strange blossoms unfolded 
their hectic beauty was that of the New 
World ; and with their singular delicacy 
of form and texture they could never 
have grown anywhere else. The disad- 
vantages under which he labored as a 
romancer in a world ostensibly devoid of 
romance, are strongly, almost amusingly, 
insisted upon in his preface to The Mar- 
ble Faun : 

" No author without a trial can conceive 
of the dithculty of writing a romance 
about a country where there is no shadow, 
no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque 
and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a 
commonplace prosperity, in broad and 
simple daylight, as is happily the case 
with my dear native land. Romance and 
poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers need 
ruin to make them grow." 

That he was by no means lacking in 
the sense of the reality is shown by the 
exquisite delicacy with which he repro- 



62 



duces the atmospheric tone and color of 
any locality which forms the setting of 
his more important scenes; and if further 
testimony is needed, his note-books will 
furnish it in abundance. 

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose 
popularity reached further than that of 
any of her predecessors, had no intellect- 
ual affinity to Hawthorne ; but her kinship 
with her greater contemporary, Charles 
Dickens, is unmistakable. Eva, in Uncle 
Toms Cabin, belongs to the same lachry- 
mose family as Little Nell, and they both 
die (one might almost say) with the same 
emotional extravagance. The inimitable 
drollery and genial satire of Dickens are 
absent in Mrs. Stowe; but the tearful 
sentimentalism which exhibits itself in a 
kind of hysterical pathos they both have 
in common. The notion I had formed of 
the negroes from my first perusal of Uncle 
Tonts Cabin was that they were a kind of 
archangels in black, hounded, tortured, 
and abused by the fiendish whites on ac- 
count of their moral superiority. It took 
me some time and cost me not a little 
money to correct this impression after 



63 



my arrival in the United States. Tliough 
in all Mrs. Stowe's romances the tendency 
is perceptible, she has, as she grew older, 
abandoned much of her early extrava- 
gance, which was defensible enough in 
the cause of reform, and has steered closer 
and closer to the shores of reality. In 
Oldtowti Folks, and particularly in the 
Sam Lawson sketches, she betrays a pow- 
er of minute observation and an apprecia- 
tion of local color which might almost en- 
title her to the name of a realist. 

Another conspicuous representative of 
the school of Dickens is Bret Harte, 
who, however, in Gabriel Conroy, plays at 
ducks and drakes with probability in a 
way that would have given even Dickens 
a qualm. 

It is the first chapter of Bleak House 
which contains the famous description of 
a London fog, worked up, as it appears 
to me, to a strained, tensely quivering 
pitch, when a single more wrench at the 
screw would snap the string. Where 
Dickens has fog everywhere, Bret Harte 
substitutes " snow everywhere," as the 
season demands, and proceeds to describe 



64 



it, not with the same words, but in the 
same key as Dickens, with the same dithy- 
rambic vehemence. The rhetorical ca- 
dence of the two passages is so strikingly 
similar that I cannot forbear to quote. 
Here is Dickens: 

" Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, 
where it flows among green aits and 
meadows; fog down the river, where it 
rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, 
and the water-side pollutions of a great 
and dirty city. Fog on the Essex Marshes, 
fog on the Kentish Heights. Fog creep- 
ing into the cabooses of collier brigs ; fog 
lying out on the yards, and hovering in 
the rigging of great ships; fog drooping 
on the gunwales of barges and small 
boats," etc., etc. 

Gabriel Conroy opens as follows : 

" Snow everywhere as far as the eye 
could reach — fifty miles looking south- 
ward from the highest peak — filling ra- 
vines and gulches, and dropping from the 
walls of canons in white, shroud-like drifts, 
fashioning the dividing line into the like- 



6s 



ness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases 
of giant pines, completely covering young 
trees and larches, rimming with porcelain 
the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, un- 
dulating in motionless white billows to the 
edge of the distant horizon. Snow every- 
where over the California Sierras on the 
15th of March, 1884, and still falling." 

The travelling earthquake and all the 
stage machinery of romantic melodrama, 
which Mr. Harte brings into action in Ga- 
briel Conroy point, however, not to Dick- 
ens, but rather to Eugene Sue's IVander- 
ing Jew. The ancestry of his noble 
villains, the magnanimous gamblers with 
seraphic tenor voices, the chivalrous mur- 
derers, the generous strumpets, may be 
traced to that high-priest of romanticism, 
Victor Hugo, who delighted in the same 
sort of violent antitheses, defying proba- 
bility and straining our credulity beyond 
endurance. The general attitude towards 
life, however lawless, exhibited in his 
early California tales, his disposition to 
find virtue in the vicious, to exalt the 
lowly at the expense, perhaps, of those 



who regard themselves as their superiors, 
shows the direct influence of the author 
of Bleak House and The Christinas Carols. 
But Harte is, to my mind, the last 
American novelist of any eminence who 
can be classed as a romanticist. All our 
contemporary authors, with a few nota- 
ble exceptions, such as Marion Crawford 
and Amelie Rives Chanler, deal frankly 
and honestly with American life, as they 
know it and see it; and though there are 
varying degrees in their power to grasp 
and vividly present what they see, I can- 
not think of one who does not aim to 
chronicle the particular phases of Ameri- 
can life with which he is most intimately 
acquainted. While Mr. W. D. Howells 
(who in point of rank is facile princeps) 
preached his entertaining gospel of real- 
ism in the " Editor's Study " of Harper s 
Monthly, the critics (who as a rule are far 
behind the time) railed at him and pro- 
fessed to regard his postulate, that the 
novelist had to be true to the logic of 
life, as a piece of amusing eccentricity. 
He was, in their opinion, merely trying to 
justify his own practice. But in spite of 



67 



all ridicule this proposition has, outside 
of England, come to be pretty generally- 
accepted ; and though the witty and ge- 
nial Andrew Lang and that brilliant an- 
tediluvian, Robert Louis Stevenson, may 
be terribly shocked at his disrespect for 
Walter Scott, Mr. Howells has a valuable 
ally in what is called the spirit of the age, 
and he is bound in the end to prevail. 
For, as P. G, Hamerton happily puts it : 

" The important service it [literature] 
renders to mankind is the pej-petiial reg- 
ister iiig of the experiences of the race. . . . 
Without a literature to record it, the ex- 
periences of dead generations could never 
be fully available for the living one." 

Whether the majority of our contem- 
porary novelists would subscribe to this 
view of their calling I do not know ; but, 
whether they would or not, their practice 
sustains it. If we have an American Hag- 
gard or an American Stevenson among 
us, where is he.'^ and what rank does he 
hold within the guild of letters } I am 
aware that Mr. Julian Hawthorne some 



68 



years ago, entered into partnership with 
Inspector Byrnes and wrote some grew- 
some detective stories in the style of 
Gaboriau; and I have also seen recent 
tales of his in the New York Ledger 
which in blood-curdling horror rivalled 
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. 
Hyde. But I cannot be persuaded to be- 
lieve that either he or any one else re- 
gards them as serious contributions to 
literature. I do not question that Mr. 
Hawthorne is by conviction, as by inheri- 
tance, a romanticist; but there is a wide 
distance between the romanticism of 
Bressant, and Beatrix Randolph and that 
of A Tragic Mystery and Section jj^, or 
the Fatal Letter. 

If besides the versatile Amelie Rives 
we have another adherent of the defunct 
school among us, it is probably Mr. Har- 
ry Harland (Sydney Luska), whose first 
books, As it is Written and Mrs. Pcix- 
ada, certainly dealt with abnormal and 
exceptional phases of life, and sometimes 
made heavy drafts upon our credulity. 
But if we are to judge from Mr. Harland's 
later w^orks, he is rapidly shedding his 



69 



romantic plumage and assuming his per- 
manent colors among the serious chroni- 
clers of contemporary life and manners. 
At all events, one will have to look very- 
far for a more delightful bit of realism 
than The Land of Love (a study of life in 
the Latin Quarter in Paris) ; and as re- 
gards Gra7idiso7i Mather, depicting the 
struggles of a young man of letters and his 
wife in New York, it is only less charming, 
but not less realistic. I have been told 
by those who are anxious to acquit a 
novelist of the charge of fidelity (they 
usually say " sordid fidelity ") to the hum- 
drum prose of life that Mr. Edgar Faw- 
cett is a romancer. In order to convince 
myself on this point, and correct previous 
impressions which might prove to be er- 
roneous, I recently re-read three or four 
of Mr. Fawcett's books; and I must con- 
fess that if he is to be judged by his best, 
[ am not for a moment in doubt as to 
where he properly belongs. In his ad- 
mirable novel, y^;z Avihitioics Woman, he 
has given a picture of New York life 
which in delicate veracity and vividness 
is as yet unsurpassed. Mr. Fawcett knows 



7° 



his New York (both its upper and its 
nether side) as does no other American 
novelist, unless it be Mr. H. C. Bunner; 
and if it were not for the breathless haste 
he displays in his prolific productivity he 
could scarcely fail to be recognized as the 
brilliant and faithful chronicler of metro- 
politan manners that he undoubtedly is. 
Take such a book as The Evil That Men 
Do, which no one can read without being 
impressed with the enormous amount of 
accurate local knowledge which it im- 
plies. I take it to be no mean achieve- 
ment to have painted in such striking 
colors the physiognomy of lower New 
York — the Bowery, Great Jones Street, 
and all the labyrinthine tangle of malo- 
dorous streets and lanes, inhabited by the 
tribes of Israel, the swarthy Italian, the 
wily Chinaman, and all the other alien 
hordes from all the corners of the earth. 
The man who can do this, and whose im- 
pulse leads him to explore with so minute 
an interest that terra mcognita of polite 
fiction, is, whatever his friends may say 
to the contrary, a realist. Let them judge 
him by Rutherford dind Salarion. I shall 



still persist in judging him by A71 Ambi- 
tious Woman and The Evil That Mett Do. 
To Mr. Howells more than to any one 
else are we indebted for the ultimate 
triumph of realism in American fiction. 
For that realism has triumphed or is tri- 
umphing no one will seriously deny who 
has kept track of American literature 
during the last quarter of a century. I 
do not mean by realism, of course, merely 
the practice of that extreme wing of the 
school which believes only that to be true 
which is disagreeable, and conscientiously 
omits all cheerful phenomena. Nor do I 
confine my definition to that minute in- 
sistence upon wearisome detail which, 
ignoring the relation of artistic values, fan- 
cies that a mere agglomeration of incon- 
testable facts constitutes a truthful pict- 
ure. Broadly speaking, a realist is a 
writer who adheres strictly to the logic 
of reality, as he sees it; who, aiming to 
portray the manners of his time, deals by 
preference with the normal rather than 
the exceptional phases of life, and, to use 
Henry James's felicitous phrase, arouses 
not the pleasure of surprise, but that of 



recognition. I would, therefore, include 
in my pantheon of realists George Eliot, 
Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, and Thom- 
as Hardy ; while I exclude Dickens, Wilkie 
Collins, Stevenson, and Haggard. I am 
aware that I am not in full agreement 
with Mr. Howells in this classification. In 
his recent book, Ci'itkism and Fiction, he 
is disposed to draw the lines rather more 
narrowly. He puts not only Walter Scott 
and Dickens, but the genial biographer of 
Pendennisand Becky Sharp, into the out- 
er darkness. It is, therefore, conceivable 
that he might also disagree with my clas- 
sification of American authors, and label 
not only Marion Crawford and Amelie 
Rives, but G. W. Cable, Harold Frederic, 
and the late admirable Miss Woolson, 
with the opprobrious epithet " romantic." 
My space does not permit me to defend 
them here, but only to remark that they 
all have chronicled certain phases of 
American life with a brilliancy, delicacy, 
and truthfulness which no one will ques- 
tion. I admit that both Frederic and Miss 
Woolson have a lingering romantic strain 
which displays itself in fondness for mur- 



ders; but their treatment of these sen- 
sational incidents is as reahstic as that of 
Inspector Byrnes (in his official, not in 
his literary capacity). Murder in Aiitte 
is somehow divested of its sensational 
character by this insistence upon verisi- 
militude, which compels our credulity to 
keep pace with the author's invention. 

Mr. Frederic has in Set/is Brother s 
Wife made the same concession to ro- 
manticism in a novel which, to those who 
know rural New York, is charged from 
beginning to end with an authenticity 
which enforces belief. This book, as well 
as The Lawton Girl (the scene of which is 
also a rural town in Central New York), 
has a closeness of texture and convincing 
quality hinting at ample stores of experi- 
ence. 

And this brings me to the main point 
of my argument. Nothing could testify 
with more force to the fact that we have 
outgrown romanticism than this almost 
unanimous desire, on the part of our au- 
thors, to chronicle the widely divergent 
phases of our American civilization. 
There are scarcely a dozen conspicuous 



States now which have not their own local 
novelist. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, Miss 
Jewett, and Miss Wilkins have described 
with the pictorial minuteness and delicacy 
of a Meissonier the life of New England 
in village, city, and country. New York 
follows not far behind with Julien Gor- 
don, the vivid chronicler of our fashion- 
able life, Frederic, Fawcett, W. H. Bishop 
(the author of The Home of a Merchant 
Prince), H. C. Bunner, Miss Woolson, and 
a dozen of minor lights. Creole Louisi- 
ana has found a most faithful and delight- 
fully artistic biographer in G. W. Cable. 
Virginia boasts Thomas Nelson Page, 
Constance Cary Harrison, and I might 
add Amelie Rives Chanler, if it were not 
for the fact that her stories might just as 
well be located in the moon. 

Georgia's biographer, than whom I know 
few with a vivider touch and a more 
masterly grasp of character, is Richard 
Malcolm Johnston, the author of the de- 
lightful Dukesboroiigh Tales. Tennessee 
has suddenly raised her head among her 
sister States as an aspirant for literary 
glory since Miss Murfree (Charles Egbert 



75 



Craddock) published her beautiful collec- 
tion of tales, l7i the Te7inessee Mountains. 
Through these and The Despot of Broom- 
sedge Cove, hi the Clouds, and Where the 
Battle was Fought, we have acquired a 
realizing sense of the distinctness of phys- 
iognomy which the neighbor of Kentucky 
presents to the world. What was hitherto 
a mere geographical conception, made up 
of some rather arbitrary lines on the map, 
has, through Miss Murfree's art, become 
an individuality ,with a living countenance. 
For so great a service she surely deserves 
a monument. Of the throng of brilliant 
writers who have raised California to the 
pinnacle of a world-wide (though not quite 
enviable) renown. I have already mention- 
ed Bret Harte ; and Mark Twain, whose 
Life 071 the Mississippi and Roughi7ig It, 
in spite of their occasional grotesqueness, 
are important documents of social his- 
tory, has furnished the comic counterpart 
to Bret Harte's heroics. There are fully 
a dozen more who have followed in their 
wake ; and only their number prevents 
me from mentioning them. 

Pennsylvania and the Middle States 



76 



have, so far, lagged behind in the hterary 
movement, and are still awaiting their au- 
thentic biographers. If Edward Eggle- 
ston had not abandoned Indiana, after his 
promising debut with his Hoosier School- 
master, Roxy, etc., he might have claimed 
the same identification with her name as 
Cable and R. H. Johnston with their re- 
spective States. But in his latest novel, 
The Faith Doctor, he has moved to New 
York, and left James Whitcomb Riley in 
full possession. For Riley is a Hoosier to 
the backbone ; and though he is primarily 
a poet, he possesses, in prose as in verse, the 
vitalizing touch of genius, which stamps 
everything that he produces with a vivid 
individuality. Illinois,* as far as I know, 
has as yet no novelist who is peculiarly 
her own ; and Ohio, Kansas, and all the 
stripling States that stretch away to the 
Pacific have perhaps failed to display as 
yet a sufficiently distinct type to have 
need of a biographer. For all that, a 

* Since the above was written a promising Illinois 
novelist, of realistic tendencies, has appeared in the per- 
son of Henry B. Fuller of Chicago, the author of The 
Cliff-Divellers. 



" prairie State " furnished the scene of 
that remarkable novel, The Story of a 
Country Tow7i, by E. W. Howe ; and Ham- 
lin Garland (the most vigorous realist in 
America) has caught the very soul of that 
youthful virgin, Dakota, and held up to 
her a mirror of most uncompromising 
veracity. 

The "Philadelphia flavor," which I am 
told is something very fine and very dis- 
tinct, has hitherto scorned to put itself 
on record in literature; but recently Mr. 
Thomas Janvier captured it, as it were, 
on the wing, and wafted it into the nos- 
trils of an expectant and appreciative 
world. Mr. Janvier possesses the distinc- 
tion of being, up to date, the only American 
novelist who can boast such an achieve- 
ment; though I seem to remember that a 
thin ghost of Philadelphia pervaded a 
short story which appeared in the Century, 
many years ago, by Miss Sprague, the au- 
thor of An Earliest Trifier. I am also 
aware that the late Bayard Taylor was a 
Pennsylvanian, and that he wrote several 
novels {Hannah Thurston, The Story of 
Kennett, etc.), descriptive of the life of 



78 



his native State ; but he forsook his ca- 
reer as a novelist at too early a date to 
accomplish the task which once must have 
attracted him, and for which he had a 
most admirable equipment. His ballads 
"Jane Reed" and "The Old Pennsyl- 
vania Farmer" show what an exquisitely 
sympathetic biographer the Quaker lost 
in him. 

It is because the American novel has 
chosen to abandon " the spirit of romance," 
which never was indigenous on this conti- 
nent, and devoted itself to the serious 
task of studying and chronicling our own 
social conditions, that it is to-day com- 
manding the attention of the civilized 
world. It is because Realism has ousted or 
is ousting Romanticism from all its strong- 
holds that we have a literature worthy of 
serious consideration, and growing every 
year more virile, independent, and signifi- 
cant. 
1892 




THE HERO IN FICTION 

OMETIMES a nightmarish 
sensation comes over nie 
that I am Hving somebody 
else's life — that I am repeat- 
ing with a helpless, hideous 
regularity the thoughts and deeds, the 
blunders and successes, of some creature 
that lived ages ago. If heroes of fiction 
v/ere endowed with the power of sensa- 
tion, they would, no doubt, be oppressed 
with a similar consciousness of pre-exist- 
ence. For most of them have not only 
their prototypes, but their exact counter- 
parts, in the ages of the past. Environ- 
ments may change, and are continually 
changing; and a certain modification in 
the hero's external guise and speech and 
sentiment may be the result of what we 
call " modern improvement." But in 
their innermost core the characters re- 



main essentially the same. The funda^ 
mental traits of human nature, transmit- 
ted by inheritance from generation to 
generation, seem capable of but a limited 
degree of variation, and it would seem 
as if the novelists had already reached 
the limit. 

The novel has existed, in one shape or 
another, from the earliest period of which 
history has presei"ved the record. By the 
novel I mean fictitious narrative in prose 
or verse; and when the art of writing 
was still unknown, the spoken story took 
the place of the written. Bards, rhap- 
sodists, scalds, troubadours, ballad-sing- 
ers, improvisato7-i have at different times 
ministered, and, in part, do yet minister, 
to this innate craving for fiction among 
the classes which are never reached by 
literature in the stricter sense. Whether 
there have been found cuneiform novels 
on the sun-baked bricks of Babylon and 
Nineveh I do not know ; but the frag- 
ments of mythological poems which have 
been discovered suffice to show that the 
cuneiform equivalent for a novelist was 
not wanting. As for the Egyptians, their 



ingeniously elaborate style of writing 
must have been a sad restraint upon the 
hieroglyphic novelist when he was in- 
clined to be prolific ; and that may be one 
of the reasons why no hieroglyphic novels 
have been unearthed in tombs or temples 
or pyramids. The king had apparently 
(if we may judge by the extravagant fic- 
tions concerning himself and his deeds 
which he inscribed upon the public mon- 
uments) a monopoly on novel-writing, as 
on everything else that was pleasant and 
profitable. The priests worked out his 
plots in prose and verse, and supplied 
heroic embellishments ad libitum. 

Having established this broad defini- 
tion of fiction, let us take a look at the 
gallery of popular heroes which the nov- 
els of all ages supply. The oldest hero, 
as well as the newest (if we except the 
very latest development), is the man who 
looms a head above all the people. It is 
the king, the chieftain, the demi-god 
whose strength and prowess and beauty, 
physical or moral, thrill the soul, and 
kindle, by admiring sympathy, the heroic 
possibilities in our own hearts. Each na- 

6 



82 



tion sees its own ideal in this type, and 
modifies it in accordance with its char- 
acter. Achilles, though swift -footed, 
brave, and beautiful, is petulant as a child, 
hot-tempered, and by no means a model 
of virtue; but, for all that, superb adjec- 
tives are heaped upon him, showing that 
he was meant to be a national ideal. Still 
nearer to this distinction comes the wily 
Ulysses, whose readiness of resource, 
faithlessness, and cheerful mendacity are 
so remote from Germanic notions of 
heroism that a modern novelist, if he 
used him at all, would be compelled to 
assign to him the part of the villain. 

Siegfried, in the "Nibelungen Lied," is, 
perhaps, the completest general embodi- 
ment of the Germanic hero. Siegfried is, 
like Achilles, brave, beautiful, and strong, 
and he is also repeatedly described as 
swift {der sjielle recke) ; but here the re- 
semblance ceases. Even though the story, 
in the mediaeval German version, may 
contradict thd poet, when he calls him 
faithful, it is obvious that the potion of 
oblivion (which the Icelandic version sup- 
plies) is responsible for his breach of faith 



83 



to Brunhild. He is truthful, gentle, for- 
giving, an ardent, chivalrous lover, and 
a chaste and affectionate husband. He 
resembles in many respects the Celtic 
King Arthur — also a god-descended hero 
— but is more warmly human, and less of 
a faultless prig. In the Icelandic version 
in the Elder Edda, he is wilder, more 
ferocious, more frankly barbarian. There 
is a freshness of dawn and a new-born 
world upon his love for Brunhild — a feat- 
ure which is most exquisitely preserved 
in Wagner's opera " Siegfried " — but, be- 
yond a proud truthfulness and regard for 
his promise, he is not troubled with many 
modern virtues. As an heroic type, he 
recurs with slight modifications in a num- 
ber of the Norse sagas ; and he has been 
and is the hero of innumerable English, 
German, and Scandinavian novels. In 
fact, the romantic school of fiction knows 
scarcely any other style of hero ; and is 
forced, in order to excite admiration, to 
repeat the Siegfried type, more or less 
disguised, ad infijiitiDii, Take the heroes 
of Walter Scott's novels, one by one (con- 
spicuously Ivanhoe), and what are they 



84 



but pale reflections of the general Ger- 
manic ideal? Tremendously brave, sur- 
passingly strong, extravagantly virtuous, 
pursued by hostile powers which threaten 
to overwhelm them, but over which they 
ultimately triumph — is not that a fair de- 
scription of the usual hero of romanti- 
cism ? Whether he wears doublet and 
hose, or frock-coat and trousers, he is al- 
ways the same fellow at heart, and he 
rarely fails to win, as the prize of his 
valor, his female counterpart, for whose 
sake he breaks many a lance in life's per- 
ilous tourney. In Mr. Marion Crawford's 
novels, Mr. Isaacs and Dr. Claudius, I re- 
cently renewed my acquaintance with the 
Siegfried type in a modernized guise, and 
in Cooper's " Leather-stocking Tales " he 
is perpetually recurring. 

Another type of the romantic hero is 
represented by the fairy tale of the Poor 
Boy who kills the Ogre and gets the 
beautiful Princess and half the kingdom. 
Boots he used to be called in the English 
fairy-tale, and in the Norwegian he is 
called Ashiepattle. In the so-called Ro- 
mantic sagas of the twelfth and thir- 



85 



teenth centuries he is a favorite hero. 
He is of lowly origin, has had no advan- 
tages of education, is often buffeted and 
maltreated by his associates; but by dint 
of indomitable energy and perseverance 
conquers all obstacles, and finally marries 
his employer's daughter, or whoever else 
the Princess may be upon whom he has 
set his heart. Of course, if the author 
is a cruel wretch, with no regard for ten- 
der readers, he may vary the denouement 
by landing the fair lady in the arms of 
the rich and hateful rival, whom the 
odious parent has selected for a son-in- 
law ; but then the chances are that son-in- 
law No, I will be short-lived, and the loving 
hearts will be united in the last chapter. 
Dickens is very fond of this Astiiepattle 
style of hero, and has used him with suc- 
cess in Donibey and Son, David Copper- 
field, and many other romances. In the 
French novel he is the young man from 
the provinces who comes to Paris in 
sabots, and rises to fame and fortune. 
Daudet has him in Le Nabab, but though 
he gets his Princess, he has to content 
himself without half the kingdom. In 



fact, the modern novelists, since the 
death of Dumas pere, are no longer so 
lavish of kingdoms, and sometimes, from 
sheer malice, pursue Ashiepattle and 
his Princess beyond the honeymoon, 
and broadly hint that they did not " live 
happily ever afterwards." But that is so 
reprehensible that I wish it could be for- 
bidden by an act of Congress, or that a 
tax might be levied (it is such an easy 
thing to get a tax levied, and so hard to 
get one removed) on every novel that 
does not end happily. 

In the American novel, the Ashiepattle 
hero is very popular under the guise of 
the self-made man. Our national his- 
tory is really a romance of the Ashiepat- 
tle among the nations, who beat the 
British ogre, and wedded the beautiful 
Princess Liberty, and conquered a king- 
dom compared with which those of the 
ancient fairy tales were scarcely worth 
considering. We have, therefore, a na- 
tional sympathy with Ashiepattle in his 
struggles, and demand that his success 
shall be brilliant and pronounced. It 
will not do to cheat him out of the fruit 



87 



of his labor, as Hovvells has done in 
The Minister s Cha7-ge, and James in The 
American ; or to develop weaknesses in 
him which make him unworthy of suc- 
cess, as the former has done in A Mod- 
ern Inshince, and the latter in Roderick 
Hudson. Hardly more commendable is 
the example of Mr. E. W. Howe, who, 
in his powerful novel. The Story of a 
Country Town, made the road to suc- 
cess so gloomy and the success itself so 
modest as not to seem worth the trouble 
of the pursuit. It is our national com- 
edy, as well as the national tragedy — this 
struggle of the Poor Boy for the Princess 
and half the kingdom ; and we may be 
pardoned if we take a more personal in- 
terest in the fortunes of the hero than is 
compatible with artistic impartiality. 

A type of hero which is happily rare in 
American fiction is what Rousseau calls 
" the grand and virtuous criminal," whom 
Bulwer domesticated in English litera- 
ture in Euge7ie Aram. The type was 
popular in Germany at a much earlier 
period, as Schiller had invested it with 
the charm of his genius in Karl Moor, in 



The Robbers, and in Fiesco. The man 
who wages war single-handed against a 
corrupt and pusillanimous society — who 
is forced into the career of a criminal be- 
cause all roads of honorable utility are 
closed to him — was a direct outgrowth of 
the sentimental philosophy of Rousseau, 
and at different times occupied the fancy 
of every poet and novelist who came un- 
der his influence. The Problematic Char- 
acter, which Goethe sketched and Spiel- 
hagen elaborately studied, is essentially 
the same type, and has yet an enormous 
vogue in the German novel. In Spiel- 
hagen, the Problematic Character ends 
his life on the barricades or by suicide, 
but usually escapes the ignominy of a 
jail. He is a radical of an extreme type, 
and labors for the reconstruction of so- 
ciety according to the socialistic ideal. 

It will be observed that all the heroes 
I have so far described have one thing 
in common. They are all heroic. They 
loom a head above all the people. The 
heroic criminal is no exception, for he is 
meant to demonstrate, not his own de- 
pravity, but that of the mediocre herd 



89 



who are incapable of appreciating his 
grandeur. The latest development of the 
novel breaks with this tradition. It really 
abolishes the hero. It has, to be sure, a 
central character about whom the events 
group themselves ; but this central char- 
acter founds his claim upon the reader's 
interest, not upon any exceptional brill- 
iancy or attraction, but upon his typical 
capacity, as representing a large class of 
his fellow-men. This is the great and 
radical change which the so-called real- 
istic school of fiction has inaugurated, 
and it is fraught with momentous conse- 
quences. The novel, as soon as it sets it- 
self so serious an aim, is no longer an 
irresponsible play of fancy, however brill- 
iant, but acquires an historical importance 
in relation to the age to which it belongs. 
The Germans are never weary of empha- 
sizing what they call die kidttirgeschicht- 
liche Bedeuhi7ig des RoinaJis ; and it rep- 
resents to me the final test by which a 
novelist is to be judged, Thackeray, for 
instance, is, to my mind, a far greater 
novelist than Dickens, because he has, to 
a large extent, chronicled the manners. 



go 



speech, and sentiments of England dur- 
ing his own day. He dealt chiefly with 
what is called good society, and the com- 
pleteness, the truthfulness, and the vivid- 
ness of his picture no one can question. 
Dickens, though perhaps more brilliantly 
equipped, had no ambition to be truth- 
ful. He had the romantic ideal in view, 
and produced a series of extremely en- 
tertaining tales, which are incidentally 
descriptive of manners, but caricatured, 
extravagant, and fantastic. The future 
historian, who should undertake to re- 
construct the Victorian England from the 
romances of Dickens, would be justified 
in the conclusion that the majority of 
Englishmen during that period were af- 
flicted with some cerebral disorder. He 
might with equal profit study Alice Be- 
hind the Lookiiig-Glass. 

Thackeray's heroes, then, derive their 
chief value from the fact of their not 
being heroic. Arthur Pendennis, Clive 
Newcome, Harry Esmond, Captain Dob- 
bin, Rawdon Crawley, and all the rest of 
them, — how well we know them ! How 
near they are to our hearts ! There is a 



chapter of social history bound up in 
every one of them. They were in the 
best sense representative and typical. 
That was the way Englishmen acted, 
spoke, and felt during the first half of the 
nineteenth century. Thackeray's novels 
are historical documents of unimpeach- 
able veracity. But take the Guppys, 
Smallweeds, Tootses, Murdocks, Betsy 
Trotwoods, and Micawbers — how utterly 
absurd and unreal they seem by compari- 
son ! A critic would have to be preter- 
naturaily acute to find in them any trace 
of representative value. Even George 
Eliot's heroes, though they are psycho- 
logically true, have less of the earthy 
flavor of reality about them than those of 
Thackeray. They were drawn, primarily, 
to illustrate a moral law or problem, and 
they are admirably adapted for this pur- 
pose. We know them ; but we know 
them less intimately than we do Colonel 
Newcome and Clive and Pen. Lydgate 
is typical, both as to character and fate, 
and so are Rosamond, Casaubon, Doro- 
thea, Gwendolen, Grandcourt, and Mag- 
gie Tulliver. But they lack the last touch 



of substantiality which distinguishes such 
a character as, for instance, old Major 
Pendennis or the sportive Harry Foker. 
They would, for the purposes of my hy- 
pothetical historian, be less valuable than 
the very sordid company who are im- 
mortalized between the covers of Vatiity 
Fair. 

Any observant reader will have noticed, 
as a further evidence of the evolution of 
fiction, that the hero of the modern novel 
is no longer a gentleman of leisure, 
whose sole business in life is to make 
love and run into debt. It was sup- 
posed formerly that a hero would have 
to be high-born, handsome, and rich 
in order to command the interest of 
young ladies (who, at all times, have been 
the novelist's chief patrons) ; and all gifts 
of nature and fortune were, therefore, 
lavished upon him. But either the senti- 
ments of the fair damsels must have been 
misunderstood, or less regard is now paid 
to them. For the heroes of the most 
modern tales are apt to be men who are 
neither high-born nor rich ; who have 
much business of a practical sort to at- 



tend to, and write their billets doitx on 
half-sheets with the printed letter-heads 
of their firm. Engineers have especially- 
developed an extraordinary popularity, 
in witness of which I might cite Ohnet's 
Maitre des Forges, Daudet's Jack, Mrs. 
Hodgson Burnett's That Lass d Loiu- 
ri'e's, and a multitude of others. The 
merchant, the editor, the farmer, and even 
the reporter and the clerk and the farm- 
hand are now attracting the attention of 
the novelist, and they are being portrayed 
not only in their leisure hours, but in 
their offices among bills of exchange and 
boxes, bales and barrels, ploughs and har- 
rows. " The novelist," says the German 
critic, Julian Schmidt, " must seek the 
German people where the German people 
is to be found, i. e., at its labor." And 
it is not only the German people which 
is to be found at its labor. In France 
Zola has, in the Rougon-Macquart series, 
chronicled both the legitimate and the il- 
legitimate trades, and conscientiously out- 
raged all heroic traditions. The Ameri- 
can people has probably less leisure than 
any nation under the sun, and its novel- 



ists, if they aim at realism, must acquire 
the art of converting the national indus- 
tries into literary material. Mr. Howells 
has made an admirable experiment in this 
direction in The Rise of Silas Lapham, 
which depicts a typical American mer- 
chant, a self-made man, in his strength 
as in his limitations. We see the whole 
life of the man in all its important phases ; 
his pride in his mineral paint ; his social 
insecurity and awkwardness ; his pleasure 
in his horses; his relations with his fam- 
ily. In short. Colonel Silas Lapham is as 
vivid a reality to us as any of his coun- 
terparts around the corner, whom we 
meet daily, but do not know half so well. 
Silas Lapham, however, enables us to 
know them better and to judge them 
more justly. 

I am aware that journalists are dis- 
posed to resent the picture which Mr. 
Howells has drawn of them in Hartley 
Hubbard, in A Moder7i Ijistaiice. It is, 
perhaps, possible that Bartley is not strik- 
ingly typical as a journalist ; but that he 
embodies a very prevalent type in our 
national life is, I think, beyond dispute. 



The unscrupulous smart young man, with 
a kind of superficial cleverness, but ut- 
terly destitute of moral sense — who is 
there among us who does not know him 
to his cost ? There is not an American 
village which cannot exhibit him in 
numerously varied editions. I believe 
that it is also a fact that he is apt to drift 
into journalism, as offering the shortest 
and easiest road to the eminence which 
he feels sure is within his reach. 

There is not another American novel- 
ist who has apprehended so deeply and 
portrayed so faithfully two such types of 
our national life as Silas Lapham and 
Hartley Hubbard. Mr. James does not 
know the country well enough to achieve 
anything so vital in the way of American 
portraiture, and each new book which he 
puts forth shows a further alienation from 
his nationality. His point of view is al- 
ready that of the American colonist in 
Paris, London, or Rome, who has learned 
to apologize for his origin. Even such 
types as Mr. Newman in The Americatt, 
and Roderick and Rowland in JRoderick 
Hudson (admirable though they be), lack 



96 



the strong flavor of the soil which de- 
lights us in Bartley and Silas. While Mr. 
Howells appears to be getting a stronger 
grip on reality, as it fashions itself on 
this side of the Atlantic, Mr. James soars, 
like a high-bred and cynical eagle, in the 
upper air of the best British society, and 
looks down upon his former country with 
a sad, critical disapproval. Nevertheless, 
these two novelists, each within his own 
sphere and limitations, represent the lat- 
est evolution of realistic fiction. Their 
unheroic heroes are, as a rule, social 
types ; and if (as I devoutly hope) long 
lives and unimpaired vigor be granted 
them, they may leave behind them a 
national portrait-gallery which will repay 
the study of the future historian. 




AMERICAN LITERARY 
CRITICISM 

IFTEEN years ago, during a 
visit to Paris, I had the 
pleasure of spending an 
evening at the house of 
Alphonse Daudet. There 
were half a dozen gentlemen present, 
nearlyall of them bearers of distinguished 
names. An editor of a literary periodical 
who was among the guests was good- 
humoredly taken to task by a young 
author for the capriciousness, the absence 
of principle, in the criticisms he admitted 
to his journal. 

"Well," he asked, "can you define to 
me the right principle of criticism ?" 

" I can," ejaculated a vivacious novel- 
ist (though not the one addressed). 
" Let us have it." 

" ' Une main lave I'autre. 

Lavez la mienne, et je laverai la votre. '" 
7 



A Homeric laugh greeted this sally ; 
but in the discussion that followed it was 
conceded that it was not at all amiss. 
It described the principle openly, though 
not avowedly, practised. The editor, 
though he made no specific admission, 
treated the matter jocosely, and thereby 
demonstrated that he did not regard the 
charge as a very serious one. 

I have frequently, in later years, been 
reminded of the above couplet, when 
reading the criticisms of books in the 
daily press. The hand that has been 
washed or is expecting to be washed is 
often glaringly visible. If it is not the 
writer's, it is apt to be the editor's or the 
proprietor's ; or that of the latter's inter- 
est as embodied in the counting-room. 
The attention which in nine journals out 
of ten is paid to a publication does not 
depend primarily upon its intellectual or 
aesthetic value, but upon the publisher's 
relations to the journal, and the amount 
of advertising which he is able to dis- 
pense. I do not contend, of course, that 
there is anything deeply reprehensible in 
this. For under the purely commercial 



99 



view of journalism which in the last dec- 
ade has become well-nigh universal, a 
newspaper is scarcely to be blamed for 
making the most advantageous use of its 
space, compatible with the general prin- 
ciples of m.orality and decency. The 
mere favor bestowed upon or withheld 
from an author, for reasons which have 
nothing to do with literature, is a venial 
offence, compared to the hideous and de- 
basing sensationalism which daily empties 
a sewer of moral filth upon the subscrib- 
er's breakfast-table. As it is not often 
that a newspaper makes a feature of liter- 
ary criticism, the influence which it exerts 
upon an author's fate is difficult to com- 
pute, but in ninety cases out of every 
hundred, may be put down as a vanish- 
ing quantity; while its influence upon the 
public, whose vision of life is largely af- 
fected by its daily resume of the world's 
doings, is a very appreciable quantity, 
and a matter of common concern. 

An author who has anything definite to 
say does not sit and squint at his public, 
while writing; nor does he trouble him- 
self much about the opinion of the press. 



The value of a criticism depends primar- 
ily upon the insight and the intellectual 
equipment of its author; and where these 
are slight, or altogether lacking, the power 
of the verdict for good or for ill is corres- 
pondingly small. What, for instance, can 
it matter to me if an anonymous young 
gentleman, who incidentally confesses to 
a warm admiration for Rider Haggard, 
and regards Walter Scott as the grand 
master of fiction — what can it matter to 
me, I say, if such a man finds me dull and 
commonplace ? I have never suspended 
my heroines over the brinks of yawning 
chasms; nor have I introduced monkeys 
falling in love with men or men with 
monkeys ; nor am I equal to the depict- 
ing of the perennial charms of women 
two thousand years old. The laurels of 
romancers who revel in this style of ju- 
venile entertainment never disturb my 
slumbers ; and the opinions of critics who 
take pleasure in such rubbish may amuse 
me, but influence me no more than the 
chorus of mosquitoes that hum about my 
ears of a summer's night. If, on the other 
hand, a reviewer, whether anonymous or 



not, shows himself to be in tolerable 
sympathy with my aim and my concep- 
tion of what fiction should be, I read 
what he has to say, with a critical reser- 
vation perhaps, but yet with interest and 
a desire to profit by his advice. It is al- 
ways a matter of some concern how your 
work affects an unprejudiced mind, which 
approaches it without friendly or hostile 
bias. And I may as well confess that a 
cordial and sympathetic review which in- 
telligently seizes your thought and from 
a kindred point of view develops your 
merits and shortcomings, is often a source 
of deep gratification. Praise, unless it is 
discriminating, and shows maturity of 
judgment, has none other than a com- 
mercial value ; and I sometimes even 
question if it has that. 

A consensus of silence would, no doubt, 
in the case of an unknown author, kill 
his book ; and would, even in the case of 
a famous one, prove highly injurious ; but 
(if the opinion of the trade is to be trust- 
ed) vociferous and elaborate abuse is, for 
commercial purposes, scarcely less valu- 
able than praise. It is the amount of at- 



tention which a work arouses that, gen- 
erally speaking, determines its fate. And 
yet while I am writing this, half a dozen 
exceptions occur to me which seem to 
disprove the rule. The late Rev. E. P. 
Roe never attracted much attention from 
the newspapers (and the more authorita- 
tive journals ignored him altogether) ; 
and yet he rejoiced in a popularity which 
threw all his competitors into the shade. 
I remember he once showed me some 
scant paragraphs ridiculing one of his 
books ; and he asked me if I could sug- 
gest any explanation of the hostile atti- 
tude of the press toward him. I offered 
a rather lame one, being unwilling to hurt 
his feelings ; for he was a lovable man, of a 
singularly sweet nature, and the very best 
of friends. " The fact is," he said, " I 
can't discover that the newspapers affect 
the sale of a book one way or another. 
The people whom I reach read very few 
newspapers; and I think they are more 
influenced by their neighbors' opinions 
than by anything they read." 

"What then, in your judgment, deter- 
mines the success of a book ?" I asked. 



" Well, I should say its nearness to the 
life and thought of average men and wom- 
en," Mr. Roe replied. 

" How do you mean ?" 

" I mean that what the critics call art 
removes the book from the intelligence 
of ordinary people. I have been blamed 
because there is not art enough in my 
novels. Well, to be frank, there is as 
much art in them as there is in me. No 
more and no less. I never try to write 
down to any one's intelligence ; but I 
write as well as I am able to write, and 
then let the art take care of itself. No 
one could have been more surprised than 
I was at the great success of my first 
books, unless it were the newspapers ; 
but my explanation is that I happen to 
feel and think very much as the average 
plain American feels and thinks, and my 
manner of expressing myself is such as 
he, without effort, can understand. When 
a man does his best, he can afford to ig- 
nore the critics." 

The above conversation, which took 
place during a drive in the neighborhood 
of Cornwall -on -the- Hudson, lingered 



long in my memory, because it strongly 
reinforced an opinion expressed a few 
years earlier by Dr. J. G. Holland, who 
enjoyed for a score of years a'popularity 
of the same order and magnitude as Mr. 
Roe. Dr. Holland, however, took the 
contemptuous treatment of the critics 
much more to heart than Mr. Roe appar- 
ently did; and the epithet, "the Ameri- 
can Tupper " (invented, if I remember 
rightly, by the New York Sim), rankled 
in his gentle mind. Even though the 
sale of his books ran up into hundreds of 
thousands, the tolerant patronage or un- 
disguised sneer of the reviewer remained 
the drop of gall in the cup of his happi- 
ness. 

I remember once discussing Dr. Hol- 
land's popularity with Bayard Taylor, 
who was at that time literary editor of 
the Tribune and the most prominent 
member of the guild of newspaper critics. 
He professed to regard it as a most mys- 
terious phenomenon ; and maintained 
that popularity and fame were entirely 
distinct things, the former being by no 
means a passport to the latter. Without 



I05 



disputing the distinction, I endeavored 
to suggest a rational explanation of Dr. 
Holland's hold upon the American public. 

"What an author gives in his books," 
I observed, "is primarily himself — his 
personality. Now Dr. Holland's person- 
ality is a noble and lovable one. I have 
known no man who has impressed me 
more strongly with his personal worth — 
the genuine goodness and sweetness of 
his character — than Dr. Holland. His 
writing is a spontaneous pouring forth of 
his own soul ; and the American public — 
the great mass whom Lincoln called the 
plain people— recognize the man behind 
the book, and feel the elevating influence 
which he exerts." 

Taylor, with his German culture and 
his detestation of the narrow New Eng- 
land Presbyterianism, whose incorpora- 
tion he saw in Dr. Holland, had no toler- 
ation for such a view, maintaining, justly 
enough, that some of the greatest literary 
artists had been pretty bad characters ; 
and that it was intellect and the artistic 
sense, not morality, which entitled a man 
to a place in the world of letters. 



io6 



I called attention, in my turn, to his 
distinction between popularity and fame, 
and reaffirmed my opinion that character 
frequently counts for more in the former, 
as intellect surely does in the latter. And 
it was not to be deplored that men like 
Dr. Holland who exerted so great a power 
for good were the favorites of the Ameri- 
can public. 

Bayard Taylor, though naturally san- 
guine, had, as the above conversation in- 
dicates, in his later years slight confidence 
in the public at large, and still less in his 
colleagues of the press. It always exas- 
perated him to be referred to (in reviews 
of his poetical works) as "the great 
American traveller;" and he felt perpetu- 
ally handicapped in his later and more 
serious activity by his early popularity as 
a writer of books of travel, " My case," 
he said, "is like that of a sculptor who, 
on account of poverty, was obliged to 
make his start in life as a bricklayer. 
When he had gained the means to sup- 
plement his deficient culture, he began to 
model in clay and make statues in mar- 
ble. . . . Now, if this sculptor shows 



I07 



himself a worthy member of the artistic 
guild and produces work of artistic merit, 
is it fair to be forever saying to him : 
'You were such an excellent bricklayer. 
Why didn't you continue to lay bricks?' 
That is exactly what the American public 
is continually saying to me. I haven't a 
particleof pride in my books of travel, . . . 
and if I have no other title to remem- 
brance, I shall be content to be forgotten." 

When, a few months before his death, 
he had finished his lyrical drama, " Prince 
Deukalion," he said to me: 

" This poem of mine will, I fear, not 
mean much to the average American, who 
would like to run as he reads. I am 
aware that it will appeal only to the few, 
who have thought somewhat on the same 
lines as myself. I shudder to think what 
the newspaper critic will make of it. 
Therefore I am going to ask you to do 
me a favor. Will you write a review of 
the poem from the advance sheets I sent 
you — for Scribners Monthly? Stedman 
has offered to review the book in the At- 
lajitic, and McDonough in the Tribune. 
Now let it be fully understood that I don't 



io8 



want you to feel under any obligation to 
praise. I know that you understand the 
poem ; and I only want you to strike the 
key-note, as it were, for its interpretation. 
It is nonsense to say (as many, no doubt, 
will say) that, if it is worth anything, it 
will be understood by the average reader 
without any commentary. For this once, 
I am anxious to be completely and sym- 
pathetically understood. I have never 
made the least effort to secure a favora- 
ble hearing for anything I have written ; 
and I want you to promise, as far as pos- 
sible, to eliminate your friendly feeling 
for me. It is not your friendship I need, 
but your intelligence." 

I wrote the review, as desired, after 
having acquainted Dr. Holland with the 
author's wishes ; but before the Febru- 
ary number of Scribiicrs MontJily (1879) 
reached Berlin, Bayard Taylor was dead. 

To me, his anxiety to be understood, 
and the precaution he took to secure in- 
telligent comment upon his work, though, 
perhaps, a reflection upon the newspaper 
critic, were not only natural, but com- 
mendable. It was because he knew the 



log 



fraternity so well, and was so thoroughly- 
acquainted with its general intellectual 
equipment, that he had such serious mis- 
givings. And yet the three men he se- 
lected to interpret his thought were all 
more or less closely identified with the 
critical guild ; and though not profes- 
sional journalists held semi-official rela- 
tions to journalism. I was myself, at that 
time, semi - editorially connected with 
three prominent publications which were 
in the habit of sending me books for re- 
view; and the experiences I accumulated 
in this capacity, though they were not all 
agreeable, I would not have dispensed 
with for a small fortune. 

The dilemma upon whose horns I was 
always in danger of being impaled was 
the endeavor to reconcile kindness and 
justice. I was not one of those who 
cherish a grudge against a man for hav- 
ing achieved a book; and I dare assert 
that I picked up every novel or poem 
that was sent me with a kindly fellow- 
feeling for the author and a desire to 
view him in the most favorable light. 
But frequently, when I had read a page 



or two, the reflection would obtrude itself 
that this was after all a very ephemeral 
performance ; and by the time I had fin- 
ished fifty pages, most of my benevolent 
intentions would, perhaps, be chilled, and 
my critical impulses would bristle like 
the quills upon the fretful porcupine. 
Had I the right to commend such feeble- 
ness — such vague and muddled thought, 
so clumsily expressed — for fear of hurting 
the author's feelings? Was I not prac- 
tising an imposition on the public if I 
misrepresented the character of a book, 
and perhaps induced scores of people to 
buy it who otherwise would have left it 
alone ? I came to the conclusion, after a 
brief wavering, that I should be doing 
neither the author nor his reader a kind- 
ness in uttering vapid compliments — or 
talking learned, laborious stufif with a 
view to concealing my real opinion. 

I am bound to confess that none of 
the three journals with which I was then 
connected nor any of those which have 
later engaged my services endeavored in 
any way to influence my judgment. Never 
did I receive an editorial hint as to the 



tone in which I ought to review this or 
that book. But by a curiously indirect 
process I was once made to feel that I was 
too good-natured, and that I was in fut- 
ure expected to be more severe. For in 
two successive reviews of mine, all the 
complimentary portions were stricken out, 
and only the censure was permitted to 
remain. When I complained of this treat- 
ment to a friend, who had had a similar 
experience, he told me that I must be 
aware that the journal in question made 
a specialty of damning. Its traditional 
tone was one of superior condescension, 
or cynical forbearance. The man who 
praised, without some qualifying censure, 
could not long remain persona grata in 
its editorial sanctum. 

He was entirely right ; and I have 
found since that, unless a critic has an 
intimate and accurate knowledge of the 
traditions of his paper, he will be sure 
to run against invisible and unsuspect- 
ed snags. I know one great newspa- 
per which invariably damns or ignores 
the publications of a certain publishing 
house, and (if the report be true) as a 



rule is predisposed in favor of the books 
of another. I give this, however, as 
rumor, not as incontestable fact. 

If I may trust my own experience, I 
should say that a book stood a far better 
chance of being judged on its merits ten 
or fifteen years ago than it does now. 
The monthly magazines gave then a large 
amount of space to " Recent Literature," 
and they often gave the cue to the more 
ephemeral publications. I have never 
ceased to regret the disappearance of the 
excellent department devoted to "Cult- 
ure and Progress " in the old Scribners 
Mo}ithly and the Century Magazine ; and 
the " Open Letters " seem to me a poor 
and inadequate substitute. The idea that 
the newspaper critic (because he comes 
earlier) has the advantage of the maga- 
zine critic and makes him superfluous is, 
to my mind, a lamentable error. Harper s 
Magazine held, as long as Mr. W. D. 
Howells occupied its " Editor's Study," a 
unique position, and contained some of 
the subtlest, justest, and most admirably 
vigorous and discriminating critical writ- 
ing that it ever has been my good-fort- 



une to read. And, what was more, it 
was discussed in hundreds of newspapers 
all over the country, and produced a 
great and lasting effect. I do not mean 
to insinuate, of course, that Mr. Howells's 
successor, Mr. Charles Dudley Warner, is 
less able and brilliant ; but his critical 
point of view is so alien to mine that, 
with all my admiration for his wit and 
his beautiful style, I am unable to do him 
full justice. 

Even the Atlajitzc Monthly, which once 
exerted so great an influence as a literary 
censor (not to speak of the North Amer- 
ican Review), has abolished its depart- 
ment of " Recent Literature," while yet 
devoting from time to time some pages 
in the body of the magazine to the dis- 
cussion of important publications. The 
more credit does the Cosmopolitan de- 
serve for maintaining a literary depart- 
ment (under the title " In the Library ") 
which unites finish of style and a certain 
epigrammatical snap and sparkle with the 
keenest acumen and the soundest judg- 
ment. I know indeed no wielder of the 
critical lance in the United States, unless 

8 



it be Mr. M. W. Hazeltine, of the Sim, 
who in point of scholarship, perspicacity, 
and hospitaHty of mind rivals Mr. Brander 
Matthews. He does not beat about him 
with cheap catch-words ; nor does he, like 
so many of his colleagues, assume airs of 
loftysuperiorityand pat the poorauthor on 
the back, telling him not to be discouraged 
even if he fails to pass muster before such 
an august authority as the reviewer in 
question. 

There is, I suppose, an evolution in 
literary criticism, as in all other human 
concerns. The process of dififerentiation 
which has eliminated the department of 
" Recent Literature " from most of the 
monthly magazines, has in this country 
as in England been instrumental in rele- 
gating the book review to special journals. 
The Nation, which commands a wide 
range of expert opinion, has long held a 
pre-eminent position and scalped many a 
rising novelist with a neatness and de- 
spatch which could not but challenge the 
victim's admiration. The Critic, which is 
now twelve years old and has long since 
vindicated its right to existence, is con- 



ducted with conspicuous ability; and the 
Lita-ary World, of Boston, which counts 
nearly a score of years, furnishes also an 
admirably clear and comprehensive sur- 
vey of the intellectual movements of the 
age. A younger rival, for which I con- 
fess to a considerable predilection, is the 
semi-monthly Dial of Chicago — distin- 
guished for its broad-minded impartial- 
ity and scholarship, and a typographical 
beauty which gives an added zest to the 
perusal of its bright and instructive pages. 
It is probable, however, that with the 
growing tendency to specialization which 
is characteristic of modern life, some of 
these weekly and bi-weekly journals, de- 
voted solely to literary criticism, will con- 
tinue to grow in authority and prosperity, 
until they will monopolize the field. It 
is obvious to every attentive reader that 
each of the more prominent ones is al- 
ready acquiring a temperament as dis- 
tinct as that of the English Spectator or 
the Saturday Review. They are accumu- 
lating a fine assortment of likes and dis- 
likes (intelligent or unintelligent accord- 
ing to your point of view) ; they are 



attaching to themselves a large corps of 
experts, in the most varied fields, and are 
gradually attaining the importance, the 
individuality, and the traditions befitting 
permanent institutions. 

1893 




AMERICA IN EUROPEAN 
LITERATURE 

HEN ^neas met Achilles in 
Hades, the swift-footed son 
of Thetis, according to Vir- 
gil, was suffering from the 
blues. There was a certain 
weary monotony about the life in the 
nether world, he complained — a shadowy 
futility which made existence a burden. 
I remember the time when, to the cul- 
tivated classes in Europe, America pre- 
sented a picture not unlike the Greek 
conception of Hades. Life here was 
supposed to be devoid of all higher 
pleasures, dreary, and destitute of all 
charm ; but beyond this, the land was a 
shadow-land, and all ideas concerning 
it were hazy and indefinite. The laws of 
cause and effect which prevail in Europe 
were supposed to have no validity on this 



ii8 



side of the ocean ; and all reasoning con- 
cerning the country and its people was 
therefore conceded to be unsafe. If I 
had told my grandmother in Norway that 
two and two made five in America, I do 
not believe it would have surprised her. 
She had seen what was to her a much 
more startling phenomenon. A slovenly, 
barefooted milkmaid named Guro, who 
had been in her employ, had returned 
from the United States, after an absence 
of five years, with all the airs of a lady, 
and arrayed in silks and jewelry which in 
Norway represented a small fortune. My 
grandmother was convinced that Guro 
(who had never been a favorite with her) 
had crossed the ocean for the sole pur- 
pose of dazzling her, triumphing over 
her, and enjoying her discomfiture. P'or 
she had prophesied Guro a bad end, and 
she bore a lasting grudge against the 
country which had brought her prophecy 
to naught. 

These complete transformations, 
wrought by a transatlantic sojourn, were 
by no means rare occurrences in my child- 
hood. Gawky stable-boys who never 



wore a coat except on Sundays returned 
attired in broadcloth and stove-pipe hats, 
which immensely impressed their coun- 
trymen. A certain vulgar impudence 
and dash of manner which they likewise 
had acquired in the far West were no less 
envied and admired. The country in 
which such things could happen could 
scarcely be subject to ordinary mundane 
laws. It presented itself to the imagina- 
tion as a shadowy fable-land, where fort- 
une might overtake a man as it did Boots 
in the fairy-tale ; where all things were 
possible, except that which might have 
been expected. 

It is but natural that these notions con- 
cerning the United States, as a sort of 
dreary and vulgar fable-land, emancipat- 
ed from the laws of probability, should 
find their reflection in literature. The 
Uncle from America was long a standing 
character in the French and the German 
drama, and occasionally also invaded the 
novel. He was a benevolent Dcus ex 
7nachind, and so enormously rich that, 
like Dumas's Monte Cristo, he never car- 
ried less than a million for small change 



in his vest pocket. By the gift of a few- 
hundred thousands, and the promise of 
as many millions after his death (for the 
Uncle from America was always a bache- 
lor), he put his nephew, the poor but 
worthy lover, in a position to triumph 
over all obstacles. The cruel parents re- 
lented ; the dutiful daughter, whose heart 
had all along been his, gave him joyfully 
her hand ; and the delightful uncle, in dis- 
pensing his blessing, in the final tableau, 
usually declared that he had lived but for 
this moment, and that it rewarded him 
for his life-long toil. 

It was, of course, only as long as the 
haziest notions concerning the United 
States prevailed that this kind of uncle 
could flourish, and as a matter of fact he 
is not frequently met with in the con- 
temporary drama or novel. The last 
time I encountered him was in a recent 
novelette entitled Mo7iika Waldvogel, 
by the German author Wilhelm Jensen. 
The uncle there, who is as eccentric and 
shrewd as he is benevolent, returns (as 
every good German should) to his Father- 
land to enjoy his American millions, 



hunts up the last two representatives of 
his family, buys a large estate, and makes 
a will, in which the niece, Monika, is made 
sole heir, on condition that she shall offer 
a permanent home in her house to her 
remote male cousin, for whom she has 
a particular aversion. If, however, she 
marries him, the estate is to go to the 
residuary legatee, whose name is to be 
found in a sealed envelope. After a cer- 
tain time, spent in the fiercest hostilities, 
the Amazon is conquered by Achilles, 
and determines to surrender the estate to 
the residuary legatee, who proves to be 
herself with the matrimonial prefix to 
her name. The American Uncle, who 
here follows the legitimate avuncular vo- 
cation, is amusingly, though not very con- 
vincingly, portrayed ; but his American 
flavor is of the very vaguest kind. Ger- 
man authors, when they need that style 
of uncle nowadays, usually make him 
hail from India or Borneo or Morocco, or 
some such terra incog)iita ; for America 
has, by perpetual intercourse, been made 
to assume a more and more definite char- 
acter, and has thereby been largely spoiled 



for purposes of romance. In Lindau's 
recent novel M7\ a)id M?^s. Bewcr (and a 
charming novel it is) the returning Croe- 
sus comes from the far East ; while his 
American brother (who hails from Cali- 
fornia) is only moderately rich, and the 
latter's American wife and sister-in-law 
are represented as being well-bred and 
warm-hearted women, and not strikingly 
unconventional. 

It is interesting to note that since the 
shadowy stage has been passed an au- 
thor's attitude towards the United States 
is determined, not so much by his knowl- 
edge of the country as by his political 
principles. An author with Tory procliv- 
ities (like Ouida or the late Lord Bea- 
consfield) is sure to cherish a more or 
less pronounced animosity towards the 
great democratic republic; and to repre- 
sent it as the home of pretentious vulgar- 
ity, ridiculous snobbishness, and igno- 
rance of all that gives a higher value to 
existence. Authors inclined towards radi- 
calism, on the other hand, although they 
are not blind to the vulgarity of certain 
classes of Americans, refuse to accept 



these as representative ; and dwell with 
preference on the practical ingenuity and 
skill of our people, their shrewd common- 
sense, and freedom from feudal prejudice. 
The young man who, because of his ex- 
ceptional daring and nobility of soul, re- 
fuses to fit in anywhere in the ancient 
feudal machinery, and whose life would 
have been crushed or broken by the stub- 
born and complicated tangle of ancient 
abuses and wrongs, finds, in the radical 
drama or novel, promptly his place in the 
New World, and develops there to his full 
spiritual stature. It is, according to this 
class of writers, the humdrum, mediocre 
soul, which drowsily accepts whatever is, 
and lacks the courage to grapple with 
troublesome problems — it is this type of 
soul which thrives in the ancient society 
and gives it its color and character. The 
Philistine is so strong, not because he is 
brave, but because he is so numerous. 
Samson, though shorn of his locks, has 
yet strength enough left to shake the pil- 
lars of the temple ; but the temple buries 
him in its fall. But if Samson had gone 
to the United States, instead of succumb- 



ing to the charms of DeHlah, he could 
have disported himself with the jawbone 
of the ass to his heart's content, and no- 
body would have molested him. That is 
the impression we derive from the radi- 
cal optimists who wage war in their 
novels and plays against the old social 
order, and who in their innocence believe 
that the ancient spirit of caste and re- 
ligious hatred and prejudice have no 
vogue and no force in the happy Atlan- 
tic beyond the sea. In Spielhagen's nov- 
els the socialistic agitator, who wants to 
turn everything upside down, is usually a 
German who has spent a period of years 
in the United States, and acquired here 
a wholesome audacity of thought and the 
ability to penetrate to the bottom of all 
shams. In Auerbach's Black Forest Vil- 
lage Tales, "The Gawk," who has been 
the sport and the scapegoat of his native 
town, becomes a useful and respected 
citizen in Ohio, and writes a letter home 
which furnishes the illustrator of the book 
with the subject for a tail-piece, consist- 
ing of two luxuriant palm-trees. In fact, 
transformations of this kind are frequent 



in Auerbach ; and the palm-trees from 
Ohio are symbolic of his realism in trans- 
atlantic affairs. 

It was to be expected that the Nor- 
wegian authors, who are all pronounced 
liberals, would deal with the United States 
as a land of refuge and redemption for 
problematic characters. The old fossil- 
ized society has become rigid ; in its anx- 
ious instinct of self-preservation it re- 
spects no one's individuality, if it differs 
from that of the majority, and forces 
every one who does differ into hypocrisy 
and lies. The great Norwegian drama- 
tist, Ibsen, has made this the theme of a 
very effective drama called "The Pillars 
of Society." Consul Bernick, the hero, 
has during long years spun himself into a 
net of dissimulation and falsehood, in his 
endeavor to conform to the moral ideal 
of the society, whose "pillar" he feels 
himself to be. He forces his son into the 
same strait-jacket, regardless of the fact 
that the boy's wholesome individuality 
and natural gifts rebel against it ; and the 
result is alienation between father and 
son, between husband and wife, between 



t26 



all who naturally belong together, sim- 
ply because no one dares be himself, but 
must do homage to the norm of thought, 
speech, and conduct which society has es- 
tablished, and upon which it has set the 
seal of its approval. The denouement in 
these painful complications is precipitated 
by the arrival of a very curious person — 
a spinster named Lona, from the United 
States. This Lona had loved Bernick in 
his youth and been loved by him ; but for 
social reasons they had parted. Life in 
the United States has now freed her from 
all foolish prejudice, and she is, in fact, 
surprisingly " emancipated " from all anti- 
quated notions of propriety and morals. 
I have met ladies resembling her at a 
Woman's Rights Convention in Boston, 
but I doubt if they would have been much 
of an acquisition to any society except 
the one in which I found them. Ibsen's 
Lona, however, is meant to be a great 
deal wiser and pleasanter than she is, 
judged by the effect she produces upon 
Bernick and his family. One of the char- 
acters, Martha, who has for half a life- 
time waited for a lover who cannot afford 



to marry, exclaims, after having heard 
Lena's description of American life : 
" Yes, over there it must be beautiful ; a 
wider sky and clouds that sail higher than 
here ; and a freer air blows over the peo- 
ple." In Bjornson's novel. The Heritage 
of the Kurts, the United States is similarly 
represented, as a land that has much to 
teach Europe, particularly in technical 
education and pedagogics ; and an Amer- 
ican lady who is not in the least carica- 
tured comes over to Norway in order to 
impart new ideas on the subject of educa- 
tion. The definiteness, self-restraint, and 
absence of all Utopian ism in this descrip- 
tion, testify sufficiently to the fact that 
Bjornson has spent a year in this coun- 
try and knows whereof he spea!:s. If he 
had drawn upon his imagination for his 
facts, his Massachusetts school-mistress 
would, no doubt, have approximated the 
type of Ibsen's Lona. In the novels of 
Jonas Lie, another well-known Norwe- 
gian author, the United States likewise 
figures as a land in which many a lesson 
of practical wisdom can be learned ; and 
his returned Norse-Americans are usually 



better and abler men for their sojourn 
beyond the sea. In his Family at Gilje 
the captain's son, who for many a weary 
year has struggled in vain with the un- 
congenial Latin and Greek, escapes from 
his classical sufferings to the land of lib- 
erty, and there turns out to be a mechani- 
cal genius, and gains wealth and position. 
It is not " genteel " in Norway to train 
one's self in the mechanical arts. Society 
prescribes but two ways to influence and 
position in the state— viz., the one through 
the military academy and the other 
through the university ; and the father 
who does not wish his son to be diclasse 
compels him, regardless of his proclivi- 
ties, to choose the one path or the other. 
It is a curious fact that in no European 
literature is America more persistently 
misrepresented than in that of France. 
With the exception of Ludovic Halevy, 
who seems to have studied Mrs. Mackay's 
salon with a not unkindly interest, I can 
recall no prominent French novelist who 
does not burlesque American speech and 
manners whenever the opportunity pre- 
sents itself. But then Halevy, with all 



[29 



his Gallic espi'it, is a Jew, therefore scarce- 
ly representative. Edouard Laboulaye, to 
be sure, was conspicuous as the partic- 
ular champion of our republic, and in his 
ingenious fable, Paris m America, gave a 
Utopian picture of American life, as it 
was supposed to be forty years ago ; but 
nobody took that seriously, except its 
author, who with charming naivete prided 
himself on his power of poetic divination. 
I cannot recall any reference to the United 
States in Daudet ; and of Zola I have not 
read enough to have a right to speak. In 
the dramas of Sardou and Dumas _/fZy the 
references are mostly contemptuous, and 
the transatlantic characters who are in- 
troduced would, if they were real, amply 
justify their author's scorn. When, as oc- 
casionally happens, a French author is too 
kind-hearted or too regardful of prob- 
abilities to kill his villain at the oppor- 
tune moment, he is apt to ship him to 
the United States. As a means of just 
retribution it amounts to the same thing, 
the one punishment being held to be no 
less severe than the other. Of course, I 
am here speaking of belles-lettres, for in de- 

9 



scriptions of travel and politico-econom- 
ical works, like De Tocqueville's famous 
Democracy in A?ne?'ica, there are found 
many just and shrewd observations, and 
many betraying keenness of insight and 
the broadest cosmopolitan spirit, 

A survey of English fiction with refer- 
ence to its attitude towards " the States " 
I do not attempt, partly because the sub- 
ject is too extensive for a short article, 
and partly because every reader has suffi- 
cient material at hand for an indepen- 
dent judgment. 

1887 




THE ETHICS OF ROBERT 
BROWNING 

N my essay entitled " The 
Problem of Happiness " * 
I made the assertion that 
Robert Browning " preach- 
es frankly the rights of pas- 
sion, and derides in his heroes all pusil- 
lanimous regard for duty." Now a voice 
comes from the East and several from 
the West, challenging me to explain what 
I mean by such an insinuation. Well, 
then, I will be explicit. I will, for the 
present, ignore Browning in the capacity 
in which I sincerely admire him {i.e., as a 
poet), and deal with him in the capacity 
in which I do not wholly admire him — 
viz., as a moralist. I venture to believe 
that I have a certain qualification for this 

* Essays on German Literature, pp. 129-140. 



task, for Browning's books have been my 
constant friends and companions for well- 
nigh fifteen years. I have lived on a 
close and familiar footing with Fra Lippo 
Lippi, Rabbi ben Ezra, Andrea del Sarto, 
and, above all, with that glorious compa- 
ny of robust saints and sinners in " The 
Ring and the Book." I am quite ready 
to subscribe to the opinion of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, who (in "Virginibus 
Puerisque ") calls this poem the noblest 
book of the nineteenth century, in which 
case, of course, I count Goethe's " Faust" 
as belonging to the eighteenth. But so 
great a work it is, that I am loath to stand 
sponsor to an opinion which may seem 
to detract from its merit. What I shall 
say, then, is said in no censorious spirit, 
but in the spirit of respectful interroga- 
tion, as a disciple may speak to his mas- 
ter. 

As I have already said, I am inclined 
to regard Browning as a eudemonist. 
Those of his characters into which he 
has poured his own soul have no sort 
of consciousness of their obligations as 
members of society. With a light-heart- 



ed, freebooting propensity they start out 
in quest of happiness, and rarely trouble 
themselves to consider whose rights are 
violated as long as they achieve their pur- 
pose. Take, for instance, that charming- 
ly full-blooded piece of Italian Renais- 
sance, Fra Lippo Lippi. Where have the 
rights of the flesh been preached more 
eloquently ? Where do you find such 
sunny paganism under the cowl of one 
consecrated to the service of Christ ? 
But that is in keeping with the charac- 
ter, you will say; it was the very birth- 
mark of the Renaissance. Granted. Tak- 
en by itself, it does not prove much ; 
taken in connection with a dozen or 
twenty instances of the same kind, it 
proves what I am aiming to prove, viz., 
the tendency of Browning to glorify the 
flesh. " A Light Woman " is a more strik- 
ing instance. The poet tells how he alien- 
ated the affections of his friend's mistress : 

" For see — my friend goes shaking and white; 
He eyes me as a basilisk ; 
I have turned, it appears, liis day into night, 
Eclipsing his sun's disk. 



"And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief; 
Tho' I love her — that he comprehends — 
One should master one's passion (love in 
chief). 
And be loyal to one's friends. 

"And she — she lies in my hand as tame 
As a pear hung basking over a wall ; 
Just a touch to try, and off it came. 
'Tis mine — can I let it fall ? 

With no mind to eat it at the worst, 

Were it thrown in the road would the 
case assist? 

'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst 
When I gave its stalk a twist. 

"And I — what T seem to my friend, you see — 
What I soon shall seem to his love, you 
guess. 
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me ? 
No hero, I confess. 

"Well, anyhow, here the story stays. 
So far, at least, as I understand ; 
And Robert Browning, you writer of plays, 
Here's a subject made to your hand." 

It is unfair, perhaps, to assume that 
this poem is what it appears to be — au- 



tobiographical ; although Browning has 
taken particular pains to identify himself 
with the story by affixing his sign-man- 
ual, as it were — his full name in the last 
verse. If the manner in which it is told 
proves anything — and I am inclined to 
think that it does— it proves that moral 
obligations sit lightly upon this poet. I 
draw this conclusion from the tone that 
pervades the verses, rather than from any 
particular verse ; and I doubt if any one 
who reads the whole will contend that it 
could have been written by a moralist. 

Still more to the point is the beauti- 
ful poem entitled " The Statue and the 
Bust," which seems to have served as a 
model for Bret Harte's " For the King." 
There the Duke and the Lady — the Bride 
of the Riccardi — spend their lives in vain- 
ly sighing for each other. She is married, 
and so is, probably, he. The passion that 
cried out in the hearts of both for a union 
was wasted, not by a severe regard for 
duty, but by mere dalliance, lack of cour- 
age, cowardly temporizing. Their mis- 
take was, according to Browning, that 
they allowed considerations of piety, pru- 



■36 



dence, and state to interfere with the im- 
mediate fulfilment of their purpose. It 
were better to have sinned, he thinks, 
than to spend one's life pining away with 
unsatisfied desire. If the sin, which was 
in their hearts, had been consummated in 
act, it would have been better for both. 

"'Is one day more so long to wait? 

Moreover the Duke rides past. I know 
We shall see each other, sure as fate.' 

" She turned on her side and slept. Just so! 
So we resolve on a thing and sleep. 
So did the lady, ages ago." 

And after having expended his regret in 
very trenchant and incisive verses, the 
poet, as if to clinch his argument, adds 
these unmistakable lines : 

"I hear your reproach — but delay was best, 
For their end was a crime ! Oh, a crime 

will do 
As well, I reply, to serve for a test, 

" As a virtue, golden through and through. 
Sufficient to vindicate itself 
And prove its worth at a moment's view. 



"If you choose to play — is my principle — 
Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize, be it what it will. 

' ' The counter our lovers staked was lost 
As surely as if it were lawful coin. 
And the sin I impute to each frustrate 
ghost 

"Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, 
Though the end in sight was a crime, I say." 

Those lines : " Let a man contend to 
the uttermost for his life's set prize, be it 
what it will," might serve for a motto to 
nearly all that Browning has written. 
They have a harmless look, and might 
readily be accepted as a maxim of practi- 
cal wisdom. But this contention to the 
uttermost implies in Browning a disre- 
gard of all rights that clash with your 
own. It is individualism carried to its 
extreme limit. Where the sense of duty 
crops out in Browning, it is frequently as 
a thing to be brushed aside as unworthy 
of serious consideration. He delights so 
in exhibitions of the blood-red barbaric 
streaks in the human soul, that, I almost 



t38 



fancy, virtue, duty, and all pale abstrac- 
tions that pull in the opposite direction 
afifect him (in this mood) with a certain 
impatience. They are less interesting, 
less picturesque. To be sure, he is capa- 
ble of painting goodness and virtue most 
beautifully, as, for instance, in Pompilia, 
in "The Ring and the Book," and the 
delightful Pippa in " Pippa Passes." But 
how much more gorgeous is the coloring, 
how much more resplendent the charac- 
terization of the guilty lovers, Sebald 
and Ottima, than of Pippa! It is power 
Browning admires ; power, in whatever 
shape it may appear. Self-abnegation, 
abstention, renunciation, are pale nega- 
tive terms which in nowise attract him, 
except for the psychological curiosities 
which they may reveal. Natural sweet- 
ness and nobility, which are but the act- 
ing out of healthy inborn instincts, com- 
mand his sympathy, but it is where long- 
suppressed power flares out in baleful 
passion that he is at his best. 

By passion I do not mean only the 
passion of love. All exhibitions of un- 
restrained energy, concentrated in a mo- 



ment of supreme action, are to him beau- 
tiful. Happiness — individual well-being 
— appears the legitimate object of human 
pursuit, and his heart warms towards the 
man or woman who, instead of sipping it 
in slow driblets, drains it in one swift, 
glorious draught. Prudential restraints 
seem always pitiful. The young art-stu- 
dent and the singing-girl in "Youth and 
Art," both poor as church -mice, who 
loved each other across the house-tops, 
are blamed for choking up the sweet bud- 
ding passion in their hearts, and aiming 
instead for worldly success. He is knight- 
ed and becomes an R. A. ; she marries 
a lord and becomes a person of conse- 
quence ; but in the midst of this external 
success both are oppressed with a deep 
heart-hunger — a sense of futility in what- 
ever they undertake : 

"Each life is unfulfilled, you see; 
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy ; 
We have not sighed deep, laughed free, 
Starved, feasted, despaired — been happy. 

" And nobody calls you a dunce, 
And people suppose me clever ; 



This could but have happened once, 
And we missed it, lost it forever." 

This same sense of futility is shared by- 
Paracelsus (in the drama of that name), 
not because he has sinned, but because 
he has failed to experience any deep joy 
— any real happiness. It is a common 
punishment with Browning (as, indeed, 
it is with certain stormy temperaments 
in reality) for having failed to make the 
best of life's rare golden moments. 

I am tempted to quote, too, as an evi- 
dence of a tendency to moral laxity,. the 
ingenious plea for the flesh contained in 
the poem, " Any Wife to Any Husband." 
The dying wife is bitterly conscious that 
her husband will not remain faithful to 
her memory. She foresees that he will 
(to use the language of Dr. Berdoe) " dis- 
sipate his soul in the love of other wom- 
en ; he will excuse himself by the assur- 
ance that the light loves will make no 
impression on the deep-set memory of the 
woman who is immortally his bride. He 
will have a Titian's Venus to desecrate 
his wall rather than leave it bare and 



cold ; but the flcsh-lovcs will not impair 
the soul-love." 

"'Ah, but the fresher faces! Is it true,' 
Thou'lt ask, ' some eyes are beautiful and 

new? 
Some hair — how can one choose but grasp 

such wealth ? 
And if a man would press his lips to lips 
Fresh as the wilding hedge - rose cup there 

slips 
The dew-drop out of, must it be by stealth? 

It cannot change the love kept still for her, 
Much more than such a picture to prefer 
Passing a day with to a room's bare side. 
The painted form takes nothing she pos- 
sessed. 
Yet while the Titian's Venus lies at rest, 
A man looks. Once more, what is there 
to chide ?' " 

It will be said, no doubt, that Browning 
does not identify himself with this argu- 
ment, but gives it merely as a bit of in- 
teresting and deeply human soul-history. 
I cannot quite agree with this view. 
Upon me it makes the impression of a 
thing intensely felt and experienced. It 
has unmistakably the autobiographical 



142 



note, and as such coincides perfectly 
with the sentiment of the poems already- 
quoted. 

As it is by the cumulative effect of my 
quotations that the correctness of my 
views is to be proved, I am inclined to 
impose upon the reader's patience by a 
few more examples. I doubt if there is 
one more striking to be found in all 
Browning than the long argument of the 
Pope Innocent III. in " The Ring and the 
Book," reviewing the alleged crime of the 
priest Caponsacchi in virtually eloping 
with another man's wife. It will be re- 
membered that Pompilia is the wife of 
the fiendish Count Guido Franceschini, 
who murders her and her foster-parents. 
In accordance with the laws of the 
Church, the priest, even though their re- 
lation may be morally blameless, has been 
guilty of a crime which calls for condign 
punishment. But the aged Pope is filled 
with sympathy and admiration for the 
daringly generous act. This is noble lan- 
guage, indeed, which he employs in sum- 
ming up the pros and cotis of Caponsac- 
chi's plea : 



' ' Do I smile ? 
Nay, Caponscicchi ; mucli I find amiss, 
Blameworthy, punishable in this freak 
Of thine, this youth prolonged though age 

was ripe. 
This masquerade in sober day 

let him judge, 

Our adversary, who enjoys the task ! 
I rather chronicle the healthy rage 
When the first moan broke from the mar- 
tyr maid 
At that uncaging of the beasts — made bare 
My athlete on the instant, gave such good, 
Great, undisguised leap over post and pale 
Right into the mid - cirque, free fighting 

place. 
There may have been rash stripping — every 

rag 
Went to the winds — infringement manifold 
Of laws prescribed pudicity, I fear, 
In this impulsive and prompt self-display ! 

Men mulct the wiser manhood, and suspect 
No veritable star swims out of cloud. 
Bear thou such imputation ; undergo 
The penalty I nowise dare relax — 
Conventional chastisement and rebuke. 
But for the outcome — the brave, starry 

birth. 
Conciliating earth with all that cloud — 
Thank Heaven, as I do !" 



And the saintly Pompilia, who loves 
the priest as he loves her, with a half- 
spiritual, half-earthly passion — does she 
regret having disregarded conventional 
morality and escaped from the cruel mar- 
riage-bond in his company? No; dying, 
she glories in his love : 

' ' I feel for what I verily find — again 
The face, again the eyes, again through all 
The heart and its immeasurable love 
Of my one friend, the only, all my own, 
Who put his breast between the spears and 

me. 
Ever with Caponsacchi ! . , . 
O lover of my life ! O soldier-saint ! 
No work begun shall ever pause for death. 
Love will be helpful to me more and more 
I' the coming course, the new path I must 

tread. 
My weak hand in thy strong hand strong 

for that." 

The bias which I have here indicated 
is one that is very natural to a poetical 
temperament. But Browning is so mul- 
tiform, so many-sided, so richly equipped, 
that it seems scarcely possible to empha- 
size one phase of his personality without, 



by implication, doing injustice to several 
correlative ones. I am far from pretend- 
ing to have expounded Browning's phi- 
losophy in these detached comments. Be- 
ing healthily robust in dealing with the 
passions, he leaves morality to take care 
of itself. On the other hand, no living 
poet has a deeper insight into the secret 
recesses of the soul than he ; no one is 
more capable of putting himself en rap- 
port with spiritual exaltation, ascetic 
enthusiasm, religious fanaticism, or of 
describing the mood and action of the 
soul upon its loftiest heights. This is the 
true dramatic faculty, which makes an 
author transmute himself into a sinner 
or saint, scholar or ploughman, brute or 
angel, as the poetic exigency demands. 
And this faculty no English poet since 
Shakespeare has possessed in so high a 
degree. The only thing, in my opinion, 
which prevents him from overshadowing 
all contemporaries is the needlessly ob- 
scure and crabbed language in which he 
often chooses to clothe his transcendent 
thoughts. But even admitting his un- 
melodiousness, and deploring the prolix- 



146 



ity and intricate snarls of his latest verse, 
I yield to none in my admiration of Rob- 
ert Browning. He belongs in the com- 
pany of the very greatest. 




MARS FS. APOLLO 

OME years ago I visited the 
studio of a famous Berlin 
sculptor. He was model- 
ling a small group repre- 
senting a lieutenant who 
has just returned from a reconnoitring 
expedition, bringing some important in- 
telligence to his superior officer. A case- 
mate torn by a bomb, and a dozen stacked 
guns formed the background. It was in- 
tended to be cast in bronze as a mantel 
ornament, or possibly a clock. Round 
about the studio were similar subjects, 
some in plaster, and others in clay. The 
cannon, the rifle, the bugle, the sword — 
in fact, all the instruments of war — were 
seen wherever you turned. 

" Do you, artistically speaking, regard 
the gun as a beautiful object.^" I asked 
the sculptor. 



148 



" No, I regard it, artistically speaking, 
as a hideous object," he answered. 

" But it represents to you something 
which you think is beautiful ?" I per- 
sisted. 

" Yes," he said with a chuckle ; " it rep- 
resents to me, in the present case, fifteen 
hundred marks easily earned. What can 
be more beautiful, unless it were fifteen 
thousand marks ?" 

" But, joking aside, would you regard 
me as impertinent if I ask you why you 
keep on modelling guns, when you think 
them hideous?" 

" My dear sir," he replied, with a sig- 
nificant shrug of the shoulders, "one 
must live." 

A few days later, when visiting an ex- 
hibition of modern paintings, I was again 
struck by the great prevalence of martial 
subjects. Mars was the deity whom these 
artists worshipped ; it was he who led the 
dance ofthe muses on Mount Helicon, and 
no longer Apollo. Bloodshed and slaugh- 
ter were glorified ; here the chieftains of 
war, in shining harness, mounted upon su- 
perb steeds, were receiving the homage 



'49 



of the conquered neighbors beyond the 
Rhine; there the wounded and the dying 
were half raising themselves on their 
elbows, swinging their blood-bespattered 
caps, and with breaking voices cheering 
the Emperor and Bismarck, or the Crown 
Prince and Von Moltke as they rode by. 
It was a pitiful spectacle to see the arts 
thus degraded, enslaved, pressed into the 
service of barbarism instead of advancing 
and glorifying civilization, 

I cannot cite all the evidence of Apol- 
lo's subjection to Mars, which accumu- 
lated on my hands during the sojourn 
in Germany to which I refer. Only 
one more observation will suffice. It 
was my particular business at that time 
to study German educational methods, 
and I frequently obtained permission to 
attend recitations in public and private 
schools of various grades. On one occa- 
sion I was present during the hour for 
declamation of poetry in one of the low- 
est classes of a gymnasium. A small boy 
of eight, with painfully thin arms and 
legs, and spectacles on his nose, stood up 
and recited in a child's shrill voice a 



tremendously patriotic rhyme, bristling 
with national braggadocio, hatred of the 
French, and the most blood-thirsty sen- 
timents. That little, spectacled fellow 
with his deplorable spindle-shanks was 
snorting and panting for the blood of the 
Gaul, and the teacher sat at his desk and 
smiled approvingly at the deluded child's 
ferocity, which he mistook for patriotism. 
Presently another valiant warrior of about 
the same age got up and spouted with 
ludicrous vigor Arndt's 

" Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liesz 
Er wollte keine Knechte." 

He was followed by three or four others, 
one of whom recited Korner's beautiful 
" Battle Prayer," and another a hyper- 
loyal greeting to the Emperor by an ob- 
scure author. 

In France the martial spirit in the arts 
is no less conspicuous and aggressive. 
There, too, the picture galleries are crowd- 
ed with battle scenes ; though it is the 
victories of the remoter past they cele- 
brate, not the defeats and humiliations 
of 1870. There, too, the majority of pub- 



lie monuments represent great chieftains 
of war, and commemorate battles and 
martial achievements. Whether the little 
boys in the public schools are taught in 
their recitations of poetry and text-books 
of history to hate the Germans, and to 
yearn for the day of vengeance, I do not 
know positively, but I think it highly 
probable. The barbaric martial spirit, 
upon which princes and nobles rely for 
their continuance in power, is naturally 
encouraged by them ; and the fine arts, 
which have the same need of bread as 
less exalted industries, court their favor 
by appearing to be imbued with their 
spirit. The muses and graces dance their 
alluring dance about the rough and brutal 
Mars, " striking the earth with rhythmic 
feet," and joining their sweet voices in a 
martial chorus. 

It is a matter of congratulation that in 
this country the arts have largely eman- 
cipated themselves from the sway of 
Mars. Battle-pieces are comparatively 
rare in our Academy exhibitions, and 
cannon, guns, and bayonets are never in- 
troduced in ornamental bric-a-brac. To 



be sure, our great generals and admirals 
have their niches secure in the temple of 
fame, and their ugly statues on our pub- 
lic squares ; and every little town East or 
West which sent soldiers to the War 
has its soldiers' monument, consisting of 
an obelisk inscribed with the names of 
the fallen, or a boy in blue leaning upon 
his gun. But these monuments are more 
in the nature of a commemoration of the 
individual men than a glorification of 
their martial calling. Our poets do not 
often sing of battles and carnage, though 
occasionally they single out heroic feats, 
performed in war, as subjects worthy of 
their npuse. Thus Read has celebrated 
"Sheridan's Ride," in strong and spir- 
ited verse, Lathrop, " Kearney at Five 
Forks," and Whittier, " Barbara Friet- 
chie." But considering the duration of 
the Civil War, and the many brilliant 
feats of arms which made it memorable, 
the amount of poetry which it produced 
was remarkably small. Among all our 
great poets I cannot recall a single mar- 
tial spirit. Walt Whitman's " My Cap- 
tain, oh my Captain," is perhaps the no- 



blest poem of the war period, always, of 
course, excepting Lowell's " Commemora- 
tion Ode." But neither is written in a 
warlike spirit. Both are elegiac, breath- 
ing sorrow and regret, and lamenting the 
sacrifice of noble lives. But they are 
notably wanting in that fierce, revengeful 
tone and exultation in destruction which 
characterize French and German war 
poems. There is in the " Commemora- 
tion Ode " a solemn organ tone of exalted 
meditation and fervid outbursts of pa- 
triotism, but no martial strain arousing 
enthusiasm and glorifying the warriors' 
deeds by appeals to the savage passions. 
Longfellow, though he was a contempo- 
rary of all the heroes of the War, found 
no inspiration for his song in their deeds ; 
while those who fought the battle of 
human rights in the pulpit and in Con- 
gress were cheered on by his voice. His 
Poems on Slavery — which, however, lack 
the rousing note and indignant ring 
of those of Whittier — may have done 
something towards awakening public sen- 
timent in the North ; but I doubt if they 
could ever have been very effective. 



Whittier, man of peace though he is, 
sings much better of the wrath of God. 
With the exception of Mrs. Howe's " Bat- 
tle Hymn of the Republic," I do not know 
a single poem in American literature that 
has the martial tread, the enthusiasm, the 
fury and fervor of war in anything Hke the 
same degree as the German war songs of 
Arndt and Korner. There are the bugle 
call, the blare of the trumpet, the abrupt, 
blood - stirring drum -tap, or the long, 
thunderous roll of the reveille in these 
poems, and you become temporarily a 
barbarian when you read them, thirsting 
for somebody's blood. They were valu- 
able in their day, when the Germans were 
straining every nerve to throw off the 
French yoke ; but to-day civilization has 
outgrown them, or ought to have out- 
grown them. They are as pernicious as 
an element of education as they are po- 
etically beautiful. 

We may concede that Dr. Johnson ut- 
tered a paradox when he said that pa- 
triotism was the last resort of scoun- 
drels ; though I am of opinion that this 
paradox has a wide application in the 



United States to-day. The pseudo-pa- 
triotism wiiich finds vent in savage de- 
nunciation and appeals to passions, hap- 
pily extinct or in the process of extinction, 
and in absurd manufactured indignation 
regarding fancied slights or insults, are a 
mere flickering blaze among the expiring 
embers of sectional hate and martial sen- 
timent. Ours is an industrial civilization, 
and emotions which are the products and 
supports of feudalism cannot long sur- 
vive where all the normal agencies of life 
tend towards their suppression. Senti- 
ments which at an earlier stage of social 
evolution were useful and necessary, are 
frequently at a later stage disorganizing 
and injurious. Among these are blind 
loyalty, implicit obedience, and subordi- 
nation — all concomitants of the martial 
spirit. A people which possessed all 
these feudal virtues in an eminent de- 
gree would be poorly equipped for self- 
government. A strong sense of inde- 
pendence, a jealous insistence upon one's 
rights, a cool, vigilant, critical spirit — 
these are the qualities which make liberty 
possible and secure. It is the sense of 



'56 



loyalty and the ready submission required 
of the soldier in the field which, when 
transferred to civic life, produces bossism 
and the spoils system with all its attend- 
ant abuses. The civil service.with its one 
hundred thousand or one hundred and 
twenty thousand political workers, be- 
comes an organized army, in which each 
one does the bidding of his chief ; and the 
result is frequently the frustration of the 
will of the people, and in the course of 
time, perhaps, the loss of liberty. 

But, it will be asked, what is the appli- 
cation of this to poetry and the fine arts? 
Well, the application is, perhaps, not ob- 
vious, but it is nevertheless near at hand. 
The sentiments which we regard as pre- 
eminently poetic are those which are 
most closely associated with the martial 
spirit. The verses which we learn to re- 
cite as boys and which most stir our 
hearts are those which deal with heroic 
feats of valor and self-sacrifice. The boy 
who "stood on the burning deck " was, 
when judged from a practical and un- 
poetic point of view, more of a fool than 
a hero ; and yet we are taught to admire 



him. I admit that to me, too, he appears 
worthy of admiration ; but that is because 
I, in common with the rest of my coun- 
trymen, am yet largely imbued with the 
martial spirit. I have a strong suspi- 
cion that to the citizen of the industrial 
democracy of the future Casablanca 
will seem unfit for survival, by reason of 
his defective sense of self-preservation. 
Browning's beautiful poem, "An Incident 
of the French Camp at Ratisbon," would 
not move us as it does if we did not 
share his instinctive estimate of Napoleon 
as a grand and exalted personage, be- 
cause he had waded through carnage to 
a throne. The wounded youth who rides 
up before him, delivers his message, and 
falls dead, is an instance of extreme de- 
votion to the martial chief and unques- 
tioning acceptance of any fate which may 
befall one in carrying out his behests. 
But this virtue is possessed in a still 
higher degree by the most barbarous na- 
tions. Stanley relates that an African 
king, as a delicate compliment, presented 
him with the heads of a dozen of his own 
subjects whom he had just killed in his 



158 



guest's honor; and these twelve unfortu- 
nates accepted death stolidly as a matter 
of course, and the incident made no sen- 
sation whatever. Thus the instincts of 
barbarism survive in civilization and are 
christened with new names, though they 
remain yet, at bottom, the same ; and the 
sentiments engendered by social condi- 
tions which are anything but admirable 
may be put to nobler uses under new and 
improved conditions. Thus the heroism 
which was at first mere martial fury, be- 
came willingness to sacrifice self for the 
common good. And in this aspect it has 
a universal application in all stages of 
civilization. The man who labors unre- 
mittingly under obloquy and discourage- 
ment, for a reform which he thinks of 
vital importance to his fellow-men, dis- 
plays a heroism which is far more diffi- 
cult and therefore more laudable than 
that of the soldier who, amid the beat- 
ing of drums and patriotic excitement, 
marches to his doom. The bravery which 
was first displayed upon the field of battle 
may, a couple of generations later, mani- 
fest itself as contempt for danger and un- 



flinching perseverance in the defence of a 
righteous cause. And in this shape the 
martial virtues still remain fit subjects 
for the treatment of the poet, the painter, 
and the sculptor. It is in this transferred 
application that the American poets, as a 
rule, find inspiration in them ; and they 
differ in this respect advantageously from 
the contemporary poets of Germany. 

A question which I never weary of ask- 
ing myself is this : How will industrial- 
ism, when consistently developed in all 
relations of life, afifect the fine arts.^* 
Much of the lameness and tameness of 
contemporary poetry is, I think, due to 
the fact that the ideals of feudalism are 
losing their hold upon the public, and 
those of industrialism are yeL but im- 
perfectly understood. A very intelligent 
friend of mine insists that poetry is an 
obsolescent art, and that the democracy 
of the future will entirely dispense with 
it. Likewise he sees in the decorative 
purposes to which the arts are now being 
applied, an evidence that they will merely 
retain their places as trades of a higher 
degree, ministering to the material com- 



forts of those who can afford to invest in 
superior skill. And even in this limited 
field, he thinks, they are destined to play 
a smaller and smaller part; for the ten- 
dency of the future will be towards equali- 
zation of material conditions, and legisla- 
tive discrimination against those who now 
enjoy undue advantages in the struggle 
for existence. Let Mars and Apollo fight 
as much as they choose ; the future, he 
says, is to belong to neither of them. It 
is to be the age of Vulcan. Let me add 
that this friend of mine is a philosophical 
student of history, and has no affiliation 
or sympathy with Henry George's Labor 
Party. 

The argument with which I have en- 
deavored to bring this prophecy to naught 
is this: there is nowhere any evidence of 
retrogression on a grand scale in human 
history. The evolution of the future, 
whatever temporary eclipses the arts may 
suffer in it, tends towards the development 
of a nobler type of man, and towards a 
higher average of well-being. But a man 
who should feel no responsive thrill at the 
contemplation of what is beautiful would 



be no improvement upon the very imper- 
fect types which now inhabit the earth. 
Even if the time shall come when men 
will look back upon the nineteenth cen- 
tury as an era devoted to the cultus of a 
vanished beauty, a still remoter future 
will witness the resurrection of the arts 
in greater perfection. What kind of verse 
will then move the hearts of men, and 
what kind of painting and sculpture they 
will rejoice in, it is of course impossible 
to tell. It is a safe prediction, however, 
that as their intellects grow subtler, they 
will find pleasure in verse which makes a 
more direct and a severer appeal to the 
intellect than is the case with contem- 
porary poetry. For I believe that the 
man of the coming centuries will be a 
more intellectual and a less emotional 
creature than his ancestor of to-day. 
Browning, in spite of the ruggedness and 
unmelodiousness of his verse, has, in my 
opinion, a long lease upon the future. The 
subtle psychological problems with which 
he deals — the marvellous soul-histories 
he unravels — will delight men more and 
more, and open paths in which others will 



follow. Goethe's grand and free spirit, 
with its many-sided development, points 
in other directions to new problems, new 
struggles, and peaceful victories. These 
two names are to me the guide-posts into 
the dim land of the poetry of the future. 



PHILISTINISM 




Matthew Arnold belongs 
the credit of having angli- 
cized and popularized the 
German word Philtster.^ 
England, the home par ex- 
cellence of Philistinism, did not need the 
term before the apostle of sweetness and 
light had preached his gospel, because 
the vanishing fraction of the British na- 
tion which was not Philistine did not feel 
themselves, as yet, as a superior intellect- 
ual caste, and, therefore, lacked the te- 
merity to differentiate themselves from 
the worshippers of Mammon. Perhaps 
they even aspired to be classed among 
those whom they despised, or, if they 



* My friend Col. T. W. Higginson informs me that 
the word " Philistine " was employed in the German 
sense by Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli and other writers for 
the Dial, the organ of American transcendentalism. 



164 



did not, their wives did ; for the children 
of light have from days of old had a 
fatal propensity for marrying the daugh- 
ters of the Philistines, who are no less 
captivating now than they were in the 
times of Joshua and Gideon. And they 
have the same trick yet of underestimat- 
ing the blessings of their new condition, 
and longing back on the sly for the tribe 
of their fathers, in the land of Philistia. 

A Philistine, in the German sense — it 
may not be superfluous to state — is a 
dweller in Grub Street, a person who has 
no interests beyond his material welfare, 
whose mental horizon is circumscribed, 
the wings of whose fancy rarely rise above 
bread and butter. No divine discontent, 
no aspiration, no torturing doubts trouble 
the Philistine bosom. As long as his 
ledgers balance and his digestion is un- 
impaired he is satisfied with the universe, 
satisfied with himself, and pities the fool 
who worries about problems in a world 
that is provided with so many good things 
to eat and drink. A university education, 
by furnishing a man with intellectual in- 
terests, is supposed to lift him out of his 



'65 



native Philistinism ; and German student 
songs are full of exultation in this fact, 
and of contempt for the sordid material- 
ism of the Philistines. That there are ac- 
ademical Philistines quite as sordid, un- 
aspiring, and stolidly contented as their 
co?tfreres in trade and commerce, is, per- 
haps, beginning to be recognized ; but as 
it is not an inspiring theme for poetry, 
the song-book may be pardoned for class- 
ing all academical citizens among the 
children of light. The aristocracy of cult- 
ure is, in the land of the Teutons, a very 
much greater power than we, on this side 
of the Atlantic, imagine ; and the Philis- 
tine, accordingly, is a trifle more modest 
and makes less noise. 

If we would see the Philistine full- 
blown in the flower of his perfection, we 
must cross to the British Isles. There he 
rules not only the wave but the dry land 
as well ; and makes life as uncomfortable 
as possible for every one who is disposed 
to find fault with him. With all due regard 
for the many grand spirits which Great 
Britain has produced, I doubt if any truer 
verdict could be passed upon the nation, 



as a whole, than that of Matthew Arnold: 
" An upper class materialized, a middle 
class vulgarized, a lower class brutalized." 
That means, in other words, that (with 
some illustrious exceptions, who serve 
but to prove the rule) the whole nation is 
Philistine, though in varying degrees. 

Let any one who wishes to convince 
himself of this fact read the lives of the 
English poets. How terribly, how cruelly 
non-conformism, in every instance, has 
been punished, and how promptly con- 
formism (even if coupled with mediocre 
attainments) has been rewarded. John 
Bull holds himself the tuning-fork, and 
forces his poets to sing in the key which 
he chooses to demand. They may enjoy 
considerable latitude in that key ; but let 
them beware, if they stray into one of 
their own choosing. The fates of Shelley 
and Byron (the former, with all his aber- 
rations, a most noble spirit) are a perpetu- 
al warning to British bards who might be 
inclined to " follow too much the devices 
and desires of their own hearts ;" and 
those of Wordsworth and Southey adver- 
tise a premium to him who abandons the 



i67 



hope of the promised land and returns to 
the flesh-pots of Egypt. It is to be con- 
ceded, perhaps, that the British Philistine 
is, in this respect, a trifle less exacting 
than formerly ; granting men like Swin- 
burne, for instance, without any extreme 
penalty, the liberty to rave melodiously 
about a revolutionary sunrise which he 
professes to espy upon the misty hori- 
zon. But then Swinburne is a poet for 
the few, and can never be sufficiently pop- 
ular to be dangerous. Even his compli- 
cated canzonettes and ballades and villa- 
nelles about babies' shoes and stockings 
appeal chiefly to those who are unac- 
quainted with these articles in the orig- 
inal. Let him only venture, if he could, 
to sing revolution to tunes as popular as 
those of Tom Moore's "Irish Melodies," 
and we should see what would happen. 

I believe Great Britain is the only land 
of an advanced civilization where the Phil- 
istine spirit is so dominant, even in the 
universities, as to be able to exclude the 
greatest scholars from the academic chairs 
on account of their religious non-con- 
formism. In Germany the universities 



1 68 



are engaged in a sharp competition for the 
possession of scientists like Helmholtz, 
Virchow, and Dubois-Reymond ; and it 
occurs to no one to inquire what may be 
their opinions on theology. In France, 
likewise, it has been the custom to attach 
scientific pioneers like Claude Bernard, 
Pasteur, and Charcot to the Sorbonne or 
the College de France, the latter insti- 
tution being founded expressly for the 
encouragement of independent research 
without reference to accepted tradition. 
It would be difficult, I fancy, in France as 
in Germany to find any really great name 
in science which was not connected with 
some seat of learning. But in England 
the two great universities, Oxford and 
Cambridge, have cheerfully dispensed 
with the services of men like Darwin, 
Herbert Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, Fara- 
day, Sir Humphry Davy, nay, of wellnigh 
all the illustrious banner-bearers of mod- 
ern progress; and gloried, in the mean- 
while, in their Puseys and Newmans and 
Mannings — all most excellent men, but, 
at heart, mediaevalists and utterly out of 
sympathy with the nineteenth century, 



169 



for which (whatever be its failings) it is 
the business of universities to educate its 
students. I am not by any means sure 
that Darwin or any of his cojif7'eresviQM\6. 
have accepted a call from Oxford or Cam- 
bridge ; but if they had all refused, it 
would have been because of this theologi- 
cal mediaevalism to which I have referred. 
Scientific research never flourishes in 
such an atmosphere. I am not sure that 
the late Mark Pattison, M. P., in his re- 
port to the British Parliament, ascribed 
the comparative failure of Oxford and 
Cambridge to educate live modern men 
in a modern spirit to the clerical Toryism 
which then pervaded the air of those 
venerable institutions ;* but I remember 
vividly his declaration that the small- 
est German university, with its under- 
paid professors and half-starved privat 
doce7iten, accomplishes more for learning 



* I am aware that Oxford and Cambridge have greatly 
changed since the above was written. Vide Goldwin 
Smith's article "Oxford Revisited," in the Fortnightly 
for February, 1894. "Oxford," says this author, "is 
now exceedingly sensitive to the charge of not being 
abreast of the age." 



than Oxford and Cambridge with their 
magnificent endowments.* 

Some years ago I had the pleasure of 
making the acquaintance of the French 
PhiHstine; and since I am deaUng with 
his tribe, I cannot, for reasons of pohte- 
ness, omit mentioning what an interest- 
ing acquaintance I found him to be. The 
French PhiHstine is named collectively 
Joseph Prudhomme, and is, on the whole, 
not a bad fellow. He has none of the 
brutality towards his inferiors of his 
neighbor beyond the Channel ; nor his 
snobbish servility towards his superiors. 
He is a small bourgeois, absorbed in petty 
economies, and the chief aim of his life 
is to make both ends meet. He is a ter- 
rific Chauvinist, and believes that noth- 
ing admirable can originate outside of 
France. But the Southern sun has bright- 
ened his temper and made it kindly and 
genial. He takes his pleasure like a civil- 
ized being, and not like a morose and be- 
sotted brute. If his intellect is not very 
alert, a certain emotional vivacity serves 

* Quoted from memory. 



him as a fair substitute for intellect. He 
feels himself intensely as a member of la 
g7'ande nation ; and the heritage of the 
Revolution (even though he may not at 
all comprehend it) has stimulated his self- 
esteem and given him a certain human 
dignity which his confreres in other lands 
usually lack. I am speaking of the class 
of French Philistines, as a whole, includ- 
ing the small traders and shopkeepers in 
Paris and the provincial cities, who live 
decent lives, make their families fairly 
happy, and hold the government respon- 
sible for the crops and the state of trade. 
A thousand years ago it was the fashion 
to cut the king's head oflf when the crops 
were poor ; and in France, as we all know, 
the fashion has been illustrated in recent 
times. The Philistine, in all lands, judges 
his government to this day by the crops 
it makes and the state of trade ; and 
that is one of the advantages which a 
republic has over a monarchy, that you 
cannot, except metaphorically, cut its 
head off when it fails to regulate the 
weather satisfactorily. Like the hydra, it 
grows new heads as fast as you cut the 



old ones off ; and each new growth is apt 
to be uglier than the preceding one. 

Now, as regards the American Philis- 
tine, I have been told by professed con- 
noisseurs that he does not exist. Ah, 
would that it were so ! But I run my 
head against him most unexpectedly ev- 
ery day ; and as his head is harder than 
mine, I am the sufferer by the collision. 
At the time when he flew into a rage over 
Mrs. Trollope's libel, and grew hysterical 
over the caricatures by Charles Dickens 
(my friends say), then the American Phil- 
istine was a dominant type ; but now he is 
as extinct as the megatherium, except in 
Chicago, where he yet survives and grows 
rich on pork. But, friends, let us bear in 
mind our definition. A Philistine is a 
worshipper of Mammon — a person desti- 
tute of higher interests. Look about 
among your acquaintances, and you will 
be astonished at the number you will find 
whom the cap fits. I have the misfort- 
une to meet quite frequently an opulent 
member of the tribe who pats me patroniz- 
ingly on the shoulder, asks me how much 
I make by my writings, tells me, by way 



of contrast, how much he made last week 
by a single transaction in wheat; and 
while I laugh at him in my sleeve, he 
basks, as he imagines, in my envious ad- 
miration. His chief pride is that he has 
made his own living since he was twelve 
years old ; when he commenced his illus- 
trious career by sweeping out his father's 
store. If he takes me to drive, he tells 
me how much his horses cost. He is so 
sublimely unconscious of his bad taste 
that it would be sheer waste of energy to 
grow angry with him, and I conclude by 
despising myself for suffering such pat- 
ronage without resentment. As for in- 
tellectual interests, he does not know 
what the term means, and he does not 
care to know. All that which lies beyond 
his mental horizon is embraced in his 
stolid and capacious contempt. 

I am sure you know this type as well 
as I do. Perhaps you have also made a 
discovery upon which I have prided my- 
self, viz., that the American Philistine 
does not invariably propagate his kind. 
His son, it is an even chance, will desert 
the tribe, and attach himself to the tribe 



which his father despises. This is a 
case of rapid intellectual evolution which 
seems to be confined to our continent. 
The English and the German Philistine 
remain Philistine generation after gen- 
eration, differing only in the degree and 
odiousness of their Philistinism. Joseph 
Prudhomme, too, is blessed with a multi- 
tude of small Prudhommes, who, in their 
turn, are apt to be similarly blessed. But 
the American worshipper of Baal has ap- 
parently at the bottom of his inner con- 
sciousness a sneaking suspicion that he 
is, perhaps, after all, not so admirable as 
he has fondly imagined ; that there may, 
after all, be something worth considering 
in the things which he affects to despise; 
and, accordingly, he will give his son the 
chance to determine for himself what 
the value of these things may be. A col- 
lege career of four years may or may not 
enlighten the young man on this subject ; 
he may relapse into his native Philis- 
tinism like the German Brodstude?iten,X.o 
whom science is nothing but a means of 
earning his livelihood. But the chances 
are against such a relapse ; in an experi- 



ence of fourteen years I have known but 
few instances. The tribe of the Phih's- 
tines in the United States are not defi- 
cient in cerebral development, and if a 
higher outlook is once opened in their 
minds, it is not probable that it will ever 
be closed. 

What is true of the sons of the Philis- 
tines is no less true of their daughters; 
although the educational opportunities 
that are provided for the latter are usu- 
ally so poor that no stimulus to higher 
interests is derived from school or col- 
lege. But the daughters of the Philis- 
tines are blessed with an abundance of 
leisure; they are, in fact, the only lei- 
sured class of the United States ; and for 
want of better things to do, they fill the 
yawning vacuums of their days with nov^el- 
reading. The greater part of what they 
read is shockingly bad ; but occasionally 
they stumble upon a good book, which 
makes a miniature revolution in their 
miniature brains. How often I have wit- 
nessed this sudden awakening of a young 
woman's mind, which had slumbered con- 
tentedly or discontentedly for a period of 



years. Then comes a hunger for culture 
which is truly pathetic — an omnivorous 
consumption of novels, histories, critical 
essays, and scientific speculation. The 
eagerness with which these damsels seek 
intellectual guidance, and follow every 
erratic will-o'-the-wisp that dances away 
over swamps and quagmires, is another 
pathetic phenomenon, which is constant- 
ly repeating itself within the sphere of my 
observation. The Philistine home which 
concerns itself only with food, drink, 
clothes, and social prestige, fails to supply 
to the children that mental balance which 
is only to be found in true culture gradu- 
ally imparted from early years, and re- 
ligious principles vitally pervading the 
domestic life. 

No portrait of the American Philistine 
would be complete without some refer- 
ence to his behavior abroad. It is a piece 
of national good-fortune, or misfortune, 
according as you choose to view it, that 
our Philistine is rich. He can afford to 
travel, and when travelling he likes to 
make himself as conspicuous as possible. 
He brags of his opulence, patronizes the 



effete monarchies, whose manners (which 
he designates as " frills "), customs, and 
institutions fill him with a grand patri- 
otic contempt. He discourses loudly in 
the reading-rooms of the banks and ex- 
changes on the superiority of the United 
States and all that appertains to them to 
Europe and all that appertains to it, and 
makes himself generally obnoxious. To 
Europe he represents America ; is the typ- 
ical American, and cheerfully accepts his 
representative character. It is futile for 
us who refuse to recognize him in this ca- 
pacity to protest that he libels his native 
land. The only way to make him harm- 
less would be to keep him at home; and 
as this is impossible, we have no choice 
but to submit with good grace to his mis- 
representation. 

12 

1888 




SOME STRAY NOTES ON 
ALPHONSE DAUDET 

HERE is no novetist living 
who possesses the quality of 
charm in a higher degree 
than Alphonse Daudet. His 
phrases have a degree of fe- 
licity which make him the despair of 
translators. Compared to him even such 
accomplished writers as Claretie and Guy 
de Maupassant seem a trifle heavy-hand- 
ed. It is difficult to see how the mere art 
of expression can be carried to a great- 
er height than he has carried it. His 
pages abound in winged words, which 
the reader (if he be sufficiently skilled 
in the vernacular to perceive their exqui- 
site flavor) sits and gloats over and re- 
turns to with fresh delight. But these 
winged words — butterfly-winged words, 
one might almost call them — are so light 



and delicate that they are apt to lose their 
color and perfume in the hands of the 
translator. Who, for instance, could ever 
hope (though, we believe, more than one 
has had the boldness to try) to transfer 
into another tongue that maze of sun- 
steeped Southern phrases, redolent of 
"dance and Provengal song and sun- 
burnt mirth " which are collected under 
the title Letires de mon Moulin ? L'Arle- 
siejine, for instance, or La Belle Niver- 
naise — who would have the hardihood to 
say that he could put that into adequate 
English ? 

The question as to whether Daudet is 
a realist or a romanticist has been de- 
bated in France without any decisive re- 
sult as far as the public is concerned. A 
realist in the sense that Zola is, or claims 
to be, a realist he surely is not, though 
there is evidence in his latest novels — 
notably Sapho and L Evangcliste — \}\2X 
Zola's laurels disturb his sleep. What- 
ever value his books have, apart from 
their mere charm of style, surely rests 
upon their fidelity to actual conditions. 
Daudet set out deliberately to be the lit- 



erary historiographer of the Second Em- 
pire, just as Balzac had been that of the 
kingdom of Louis PhiUppe, le t'oz citoyen. 
His position as private secretary to the 
Due de Morny afforded him an excellent 
opportunity for studying that age of glit- 
tering corruption in its most intimate as- 
pects. Never was an embryonic novelist 
more happily placed than Alphonse Dau- 
det in the bed-chamber (for the duke 
conducted most of his affairs from his 
bed-chamber) of that dazzling, fascinat- 
ing, unscrupulous, amiable, and altogeth- 
er complex libertine who ruled France in 
the name of his half-brother. Napoleon 
III. But, on the other hand, it is doubt- 
ful if France at that time possessed an- 
other man so happily equipped for mak- 
ing the most of this rare opportunity. 
Read The Nabob and you will be able to 
judge. There is the social record of 
the Second Empire, written in letters of 
flame. Though concessions are made to 
the exigencies of art, the book is almost 
a chronicle, and a chroniqiie scaiidaleiise 
at that, as every novel of the period was 
bound to be. It gathers the striking 



characteristics of that interesting deca- 
dence into a large, impressive, and com- 
prehensive picture. Natural causes pro- 
duce natural — nay, inevitable — effects. 
We get a view of the hidden levers and 
springs which set all this complex ma- 
chinery in motion ; and, though it may 
not increase our respect for the Empire 
to know what these springs were, it cer- 
tainly will increase our i^nowledge and 
understanding of many bewildering facts 
of modern history. All the mushroom 
growths which flourished and luxuriated 
in those days on the dunghill of official 
corruption, and whose soil was blown 
from under them by the explosion of the 
Franco-Prussian war, fill, perhaps, a dis- 
proportionate space in the stoiy; and, in 
order to spare the sensibilities of the sen- 
timental reader at the final catastrophe, 
the author has introduced one pure and 
innocent pair of lovers — M. de Gerry and 
Mademoiselle Joyeuse — who, like a mod- 
ern Deucalion and Pyrrha, are saved in a 
water-tight little compartment amid the 
universal deluge. 

Of Daudet's other novels, Le Petit 



Cho:<e, which was the first in order, is 
particularly attractive by reason of the 
biographical material which it contains. 
Up to the eleventh chapter it is a truth- 
ful account of the author's boyhood and 
early youth. Its tone is sentimental and 
a trifle lachrymose. Daudet is the son 
of a once -prosperous silk manufacturer 
in Nismes, who failed, moved to Lyons, 
where the son's troubles began, and never 
recovered his peace of mind or his fort- 
une. His father's poverty and ili-humor 
were sore trials to Alphonse ; and his 
sensitive temperament and lack of pluck 
(in the Anglo-Saxon sense) caused him 
to feel the misfortunes of his family with 
an acuteness which made his boyhood, 
after the removal from the sunny South, 
a perpetual misery. Read the vivid chap- 
ter in Le Petit CJiose on the hunt for the 
cockroaches in the dreary lodgings in 
Lyons. It bears the indelible stamp of 
autobiography, and is altogether mas- 
terly in its grim veracity. If it had 
been venomous serpents the Eysette 
family had been hunting for in cor- 
ners and crevices, the author could not 



«S3 



have expended more horror on the situ- 
ation. 

The temperamental note which is here 
so distinctly struck vibrates audibly 
through all the early books of the au- 
thor. \n Jack, which is a prolonged mis- 
ery in some thirty-odd chapters, the hero 
becomes positively tiresome by reason of 
his misfortunes. If his various miseries 
were not described with such marvellous 
vividness that it becomes an artistic pleas- 
ure to follow them, we should cheerfully 
renounce the acquaintance of Master Jack 
and his reprehensible mother at an early 
stage of their career. But Jack's mother 
is the kind of character which it is not 
easy to dismiss. F"lippant, vicious, good- 
natured, sentimental, and by turns affec- 
tionate and cruel, she is so altogether 
modern and contemporaneous in all her 
contradictory characteristics that her fol- 
lies become interesting by reason of being 
typical. There is a strong flavor of Dick- 
ens in this novel, as also in the descrip- 
tion of the Joyeuse family in The Nabob ; 
and it would seem probable that the au- 
thor of David Coppcrficld and Donibty 



and Son had inspired a good many chap- 
ters in Daudet, if the latter did not ex- 
pressly declare that he has never read 
Dickens, or at least had not read him at 
the time when these novels were written. 
If Daudet had remained faithful to a 
resolution which at a certain time of his 
life he no doubt cherished, we should 
have missed the works by which he will 
be longest remembered ; viz., Fromont 
jeune et Risler aine (English, Sidonie) and 
Nuina Roumestan. For if he had con- 
fined himself to depicting the Second 
Empire in all its phases — its coviedie hii- 
inaine, in the Balzac sense — he would 
have been compelled to leave the Repub- 
lic to the tender mercies of some more or 
less competent successor. It is generally 
assumed (though Daudet has taken pains 
to deny it) that Numa Roumestan is none 
other than Gambetta, and that in the face 
of a hundred denials he will continue to 
remain Gambetta. It is easy to under- 
stand how a novelist can with safe con- 
science depict a man, and yet say that the 
result is not a portrait. An artist like 
Daudet refrains from servile copying, but 



he takes the kernel of a man's charac- 
ter, his essential nature, as it were, and 
clothes it in living flesh and blood ; ad- 
hering, no doubt, to the actual type which 
he has in mind, but adding touches here 
and there and inventing traits and inci- 
dents which are in essential harmony with 
the character. The result, then, both is 
and is not the same as the living model. 
Daudet has in this sense denied that the 
Due de Mora in The Nabob is intended 
to represent the Due de Morny, and he 
might with equal propriety deny that he 
is himself The Little Thing in Le Petit 
Chose. As a matter of fact, there is prob- 
ably not a single prominent character 
(nay, perhaps not even a subordinate one) 
in all Daudet's books which is not drawn 
from a living model. He has very little 
invention of the romantic sort (in which, 
for instance, Dumas pere excelled). He 
is, in my opinion, a better novelist for not 
having it. His books are historic docu- 
ments of unimpeachable value. To the 
future historian of the Second Empire 
and the Third Republic they will be of 
greater importance than any number of 



1 86 



diplomatic blue-books and protocols of 
legislative proceedings. Thus people 
thought and acted in France in the lat- 
ter half of the nineteenth century ; every 
page bears evidence of the author's ve- 
racity. These are the typical characters 
in politics, religion, society, finance, and 
trade. The lower strata of society he 
has neglected, obviously because he does 
not know them. It is only Parisian life 
which he knows and by preference de- 
scribes. If he is ever to rival Balzac in 
comprehensiveness and completeness (as 
he surpasses him in delicacy and felicity 
of phrase), he will have to write nov- 
els dealing with the Vie de Province be- 
fore he is many years older, though he 
may without offence omit the Etudes 
Philosophiqiies. But it is an open ques- 
tion whether Balzac added to his laurels 
by his novels of provincial life, and we 
fear Daudet would, outside of his native 
South, suffer a worse fate. His Tariarin 
de Tarascon is a revelation of the very 
heart of the florid, magniloquent South of 
France ; the sunny, luxuriant South, with 
its love of glory, its half-burlesque yearn- 



.87 



ing for heroism, its sweet naivete, and its 
indestructible joy in existence. To have 
depicted this ought to suffice for any 
man's ambition. 

Of Daudet's other works The Kings in 
Exile is the most notable. The King of 
Illyria, who, having lost his crown by a 
revolution, wastes his health and sub- 
stance in riotous living, while his heroic 
wife plots and schemes for the recovery 
of his throne, is but a thin disguise for 
the King of Naples, whose fate and per- 
sonality in nowise differed from those of 
the unworthy scion of royalty who is here 
described. The Evangelist is a somewhat 
repulsive study of religious fanaticism, 
and gives one the impression that the 
author is here in an unknown territory, 
where he has not. as yet, taken his bear- 
ings. In Sapho we find Daudet enter- 
ing into rivalry with Zola in his own field. 
How a man of fifty who is a father can 
dedicate such a book to his sons "when 
they will be twenty years old " is a mys- 
tery which it takes a Frenchman to un- 
derstand. 

Henry James, if I remember rightly, 



i88 



once sighed for more latitude in English 
fiction, but I fancy that if he had been a 
Frenchman (and still been Henry James) 
he would have sighed for less. It would 
seem impossible to go farther than Dau- 
det has done in Sapho and still remain 
within the domain of literature. Zola's 
Nana is, morally speaking, a saner and 
healthier book. No one will ever rise 
from its perusal without the same sort of 
shudder which he might feel at witness- 
ing a clinic or an autopsy. And Zola, by 
the way, in describing his heroine as a 
pest-boil on the body social, frankly as- 
sumes the role of a demonstrator. He is, 
indeed, no mean pathologist, whatever 
one may think of his psychology. Dau- 
det, on the other hand, is primarily an 
artist, and as such necessarily a psycholo- 
gist. From his dedication it is to be sur- 
mised that he meant incidentally, or at 
least inferentially, to preach. But his ser- 
mon resembles those of Abraham a Santa 
Clara. It is so clever, so witty, so amus- 
ing, that one is apt to overlook its moral 
import. While Na7ia warns and fright- 
ens, Sapho piques one's curiosity. The 



charm of the very improper heroine is so 
delicately insinuated that the reader has 
to be on his guard against a sneaking 
desire for her acquaintance. He does 
not loathe her as he does Nana. He is 
not shaken in his innermost being at the 
contemplation of her destructiveness to 
body and soul. The beautiful Gorgon 
whom Zola has depicted is therefore far 
less dangerous than the beautiful Siren of 
his subtile and exquisite confrere. 

Of T/ie Immortal I shall not say much, 
because I have not read it. Although a 
professional reviewer, I have not yet ac- 
quired that oracular infallibility which 
enables so many members of my guild to 
say striking things about books which 
they have not read. A friend of mine 
who habitually bristles with epigram, in- 
forms me that it is a most profound ex- 
position of the shallowness of modern 
life, a most noble disquisition upon its 
meanness, and a most civilized demon- 
stration of our imminent return to sav- 
agery. In other words, it is a discourse 
upon the fierceness of the modern strug- 
gle for existence ; and its hero is aptly 



designated by that awful specimen of 
a Gallicised angliclsm, le struggle for 
lifeiir. The plot hinges upon a hotly- 
contested election to the " Society of the 
Forty Immortals," the French Acad- 
emy. 

The History of I\Iy Books, which is 
delightfully confidential, is full of the 
" sweetness and light " of the author's 
early period. It discreetly lifts the veil 
of privacy, and gives us pleasant glimpses 
of his personality and family relations. 
It is of light weight compared to T/ie 
Nabob and N^iima Rouniestan ; but, apart 
from the excellence of its literary work- 
manship, it is interesting as showing that, 
like those of Goethe, Daudet's works are 
but " one continued confession." " Blood 
is a quite peculiar juice," says Mephis- 
topheles ; and every book of lasting value 
is written with its author's blood. Such 
books can never grow old, and, even when 
the age has outgrown them, they will 
preserve a vitality which will save them 
from oblivion. 

Artists' Wives is a collection of short 
stories which no artist candidate for mat- 



rimony can afford to leave unread. It 
is an elaboration in twelve chapters of 
Punch's laconic advice : " Don't." The 
preface, which is an ingenious bit of dia- 
logue between a poet and a painter, the 
former a bachelor and the latter happily 
married, would, in spite of its cautious 
reservations and concessions, deprive 
even a Brigham Young of his taste for 
marrying. To steer safely in such dan- 
gerous waters, where hidden rocks and 
quicksands lie in wait to wreck your frail 
bark at every turn of your rudder, would 
require a firmer hand, a cooler head, and 
a deeper knowledge of navigation than 
even the most conceited male would pre- 
tend to possess. When the vulgarly clev- 
er and pretty shop-girl ruins the life of 
the promising poet, Heurtesbise, it might 
seem to the uninitiated that Heurtes- 
bise got no more than his deserts, if 
he was fool enough to take a pretty face 
on trust — and out of a bric-a-brac shop 
at that. But, unhappily, that is the kind 
of folly for which not only young poets but 
young men in all professions have a fatal 
proclivity. It is indeed well that men 



should marry in their foolish age, or they 
would not marry at all — in the upper 
strata of society, I mean, where women 
have, as a rule, ceased to be helpmeets to 
their husbands, as they yet generally are 
in the lower ranks. 

But Daudet (leaving the question in 
its wider bearings out of consideration) 
desires merely to enforce the proposition 
that an artist runs a far greater risk than 
do other men in marrying. He absolutely 
requires for his happiness that his wife 
shall love his art, and be interested in 
the aesthetic, and not merely the com- 
mercial aspects of his occupation. But 
women who are by training and temper- 
ament capable of this aesthetic apprecia- 
tion would seem to be very rare in France, 
if we are to judge by Daudet's book. 
The pctites niiseres of daily companion- 
ship with an unbeloved or uncongenial 
partner he depicts with a convincing 
mastery and vividness which lifts them, 
as it were, into the region of actual ex- 
perience, and he accomplishes this result 
by those felicitous feather-touches of de- 
scription and portraiture which are so 



peculiarly his own that they would seem 
to require a new adjective for their char- 
acterization, coined from his name. 

Altogether, the score of novels which 
bear the name of Alphonse Daudet will 
prove most precious documents to the 
future historian who shall undertake to 
do for the nineteenth century what Taine, 
Thiers, and De Tocqueville have done for 
the eighteenth. 
13 




MY LOST SELF 

F Mr. Thomas Hardy had not 
appropriated the title The 
Return of the Native, I 
should have employed it as 
a superscription for the fol- 
lowing reflections. There is a suggestion 
in the word "■ native " which I particular- 
ly like — a flavor of the woods — of some- 
thing indigenous, aboriginal, deeply root- 
ed in the soil. It was the feeling that I 
had in a measure forfeited the right to 
apply it to myself which caused me a 
vague heartache during my recent visit 
to Norway. A residence of twenty-three 
years in the United States had so com- 
pletely transformed me — changed my 
very substance — that I lacked the bra- 
zenness even to personate my lost Norse 
self. I knew beforehand that it would 
have been a dismal failure. It is not your 



physical fibres only that are perpetually 
displaced and renewed; your spiritual 
being is subject to the same cruel and 
beneficent law of renovation and decay ; 
and it is a very singular sensation to be 
suddenly made aware (as I was in Nor- 
way) of what you had changed from — to 
be confronted, as it were, with your lost, 
primitive self, I met him (should I say 
z'/ f) on the pier the moment I set foot on 
Norwegian soiL He shook me by the 
hand, stared at me with a sharp re- 
proach, and remarked that I "affected a 
foreign accent." He spoke Norwegian 
to my wife and sons, and was filled with 
amazement, not unmixed with repro- 
bation, because they did not understand 
him. 

" What !" he asked, in a tone of rebuke ; 
"do you mean to say that you have 
not taught your children your mother 
tongue ?" 

I explained apologetically that it was 
not their mother tongue, and that they 
had had no opportunity of learning it; 
whereupon I sank so low in the estima- 
tion of my lost self that we barely man- 



196 



aged with great stress to be polite to 
each other. 

The doubt tormented me, during the 
first week of my sojourn in Norway, 
whether my lost self might not, after all, 
be right. I went into book-stores, dry- 
goods stores, and telegraph-offices, deliv- 
ering myself, as I fancied, of the most 
elegant Norwegian, and everywhere the 
man in charge either answered me in 
English, or called a clerk who possessed 
the accomplishment of English speech. 
I cudgelled my brain to find out what 
was the matter with my Norwegian, and 
received at last a succinct explanation 
from a friend, who asserted that there 
was nothing at all the matter with it ex- 
cept that it was English. It was, he said, 
the kind of Norwegian that is spoken by 
Englishmen and Americans — only, per- 
haps, a trifle more fluent. How curious- 
ly this intimation affected me no one will 
comprehend. A sort of somnambulistic 
confusion of identity haunted me. I saw 
things from two distinct points of view. 
I saw myself dimly, as I appeared to my 
lost self, and viewed myself with senti- 



ments of mingled contempt and pity, and 
at the same time I reciprocated his feel- 
ings cordially; and from the mental eleva- 
tion of a man of the world, who had tak- 
en a cosmopolitan survey of humanity, I 
looked down upon him as a simple-mind- 
ed, patriotic little cockney. Now I was 
my lost self, and shared his sentiments ; 
and now, again, I was my new American 
self, who regarded things Norwegian with 
something of the interested supercilious- 
ness with which a big and rich nation 
patronizes a small and poor one. If this 
perpetual flitting between my two selves, 
with its attendant conflicts of sentiment, 
had continued long enough, I should, no 
doubt, by a psychological necessity have 
been torn into two distinct beings — a 
Norwegian Jekyl and an American Hyde, 
or an American Jekyl and a Norwegian 
Hyde; and we should have ended by part- 
ing as amicably as circumstances would 
permit, though I fancy a mysterious in- 
terdependence of each upon the other— 
a haunting sense of incompleteness, and 
perhaps a mutual homesick yearning — 
would scarcely be avoided. 



rgS 



A reminiscence from my childhood, 
which had been banished from my mind 
for a quarter of a century, returned to 
me with extreme vividness and caused 
me the Hveliest regret. When I was nine 
or ten years old I had a tutor, of the ul- 
tra-patriotic species known as Norse- 
Norseman. Once when we were stand- 
ing together on the beach, looking at the 
huge mountain peaks reflected in the 
fiord, he broke forth with startling sud- 
denness. 

" Boy," he said, with a noble glow of 
enthusiasm, "the first thing you should 
thank God for in the morning and the 
last thing at night is this, that you are 
born a Norwegian. God made no end of 
Frenchmen and Germans and English- 
men, but he made only a very few Nor- 
wegians, because the stuff was too pre- 
cious !' 

Never shall I forget the thrill of patri- 
otic pride which rippled through me at 
the consciousness that I belonged to this 
select and favored race. How with a 
boy's delight in the heroic I gloried in 
the feats of the Vikings on sea and land, 



199 



the bloodier the better; and with a sav- 
age joy in adventure depicted to myself 
their brave galleys sailing the main, and 
spreading terror of the Norseman's name 
throughout the effete kingdoms of the 
world. How heartlessly I joined in derid- 
ing and tormenting those boys at school 
whose appellations indicated an admixt- 
ure of Dutch, Danish, or German blood ! 
How deeply I despised them ; how mer- 
cilessly I made them feel their inferiority 
to the proud Norseman ! I remember 
with what righteous indignation I once 
thrashed a boy as a mere wholesome dis- 
cipline because his father was a Dane ; 
for the Danes, as I had recently learned 
from history, were the enemies of Nor- 
way, and had maltreated her for four 
hundred years, once even reducing her 
to a provincial relation. I had an old 
score to settle on my country's behalf, 
and I settled it then and there. Never 
have I felt so virtuous, so gloriously con- 
tented as I did when, with my hands in 
my pocket, I swaggered away from that 
weeping Danish boy. I felt I was play- 
ing an historic role and was justifying my 



noble ancestry. It is nearly thirty years 
since I performed this heroic feat, and I 
blush to think how miserably I have since 
degenerated ! Now, like the cosmopoli- 
tan poltroon I am, I bow politely to mine 
enemies and make flattering speeches to 
those who despitefully use me. It never 
occurs to me to avenge my country's 
wrongs by boxing the ears of any chance 
gentleman whose ancestors may have 
been mixed up with the ancient feuds of 
Norway. But for all that, I feel a sort 
of amused tenderness for this lost juve- 
nile self of mine, and I would give a year 
of my life to be able to transpose myself 
back into that noble piratical state of 
mind, when to swing a cutlass seemed so 
infinitely more glorious than to be driv- 
ing a quill. 

I shall, in all likelihood, be suspected 
of levity if I say that I would contented- 
ly return to that primitive condition, and 
count myself thrice blessed if, by some 
magic process, I could slip back perma- 
nently into my lost self; if I could drink 
deeply of that potion of oblivion which 
Grimhild in the Volsunga Saga gave to 



Sigurd, and have all the experience that 
has transformed me drift away and van- 
ish like a dream that dissolves at waking. 
The world was not draped in gray then, 
but lay dewy and fragrant, flushed with 
the lovely colors of the dawn. What a 
passion of life and joy thrilled in my 
veins ! How melodiously my heart beat ! 
And how brave, how strenuous, how rav- 
ishing its rhythm ! How remote from me 
was the dreary resignation, the melan- 
choly philosophy of patience which now 
weighs like a gray deposit of the current 
of time upon my spirit ! Nay, there was 
a zest in each breath — a wholesome sav- 
age relish in the taste and feel and smell 
of things, for the loss of which no book- 
ish delights can compensate. And what 
an exquisite set of senses I had, forsooth ! 
How keen-edged, quiveringly alert, and 
vigilant they were ! I could almost weep 
(if that too were not one of my lost ac- 
complishments) at the thought of all the 
happiness that I have forfeited by the 
gradual blunting of those delicate instru- 
ments for apprehending reality. How 
sweet the world smclled every morning, 



when it woke with a bright, dewy gaze 
from the slumber of the night ! How I 
plunged into it, revelled, rioted in it with 
wanton zest ! Each season had its own 
peculiar joys. There was an inexhausti- 
ble delight in watching the changing 
tone of earth and sky at the approach of 
spring; and scarcely less was the rapture 
with which I hailed the autumnal splen- 
dors—the first frost on the river and the 
birds of passage and the first premoni- 
tions of snow. 

I maintain that no pleasure that life 
has offered me in later years is compara- 
ble to these ; and it was because my lost 
self was temporarily revived and persist- 
ed in nudging me in the side wherever I 
went; it was therefore, I say, that my 
anticipated enjoyments assumed such an 
elegiac tone — nay, were largely turned 
into regrets. I was like an organist who 
sits down at his instrument to play Men- 
delssohn's Wedding March, and whose 
fingers wander away, willy-nilly, into the 
solemn intricacies of the Dead March in 
" Saul." I sat down, in my American 
self, at an American desk, filled with 



patronizing superciliousness towards my 
Norse self; and lo and behold ! my Norse 
self slipped into the seat of consciousness, 
and, like Balaam, I find that my curses 
have turned into blessings. I fancied, un- 
til this fatal visit to Norway, that I was 
greatly to be congratulated on having 
risen in the scale of civilization ; but now I 
would willingly descend the scale again, 
step by step.or at one grand stride, if I could 
be sure of recovering what I have lost. 

My American self, who has been si- 
lenced in this debate, here mildly insinu- 
ates that I have been guilty of a confu- 
sion of terms. It is not, in the opinion 
of this authority, my primitive self, but 
my youth I am regretting. All these 
delightful things which unquestionably 
have gone from me I should have lost 
as surely, with the lapse of years, if I had 
remained primitive. I am in the position 
of the poet in the prologue to " Faust," 
and my yearnings, as well as their cause, 
are identical with his : 



Then give me back that time of pleasures, 
When yet in joyous growth I sang ; 



When, like a fount, the thronging measures 

Uninterrupted gushed and sprang ! 
Then bright mist veiled the world before 
me ; 

In opening buds a marvel woke. 

As I the thousand blossoms broke, 
Which every valley richly bore me ! 

I nothing had, and yet enough for 
youth — 

Joy in illusion, ardent thirst for truth. 
Give, unrestrained, the old emotion. 

The bliss that touched the verge of pain, 
The strength of Hate, Love's deep devo- 
tion — 

give me back my youth again /" 

If I were capable of detaching myself 
from my American self as completely as 
I did a year ago, I should make a crush- 
ing rejoinder to this insinuation ; but suf- 
fering, as I do, from the old confusion 
of identity, I shall have to leave it unan- 
swered. 
1892 




THE MERIDIAN OF LIFE 

pass the meridian of life 
— the half-way house, the 
temporary resting-place be- 
tween youth and age — is an 
unpleasant thing. I never 
yet knew a man who did it joyously. An 
elegiac mood seems the proper one for 
the occasion. A melancholy resignation 
invades one's spirit on that fatal day, in 
spite of one's resolve to take a cheerful 
view of the situation. Though you may 
laugh ever so heartily, and be as youth- 
fully frisky as you like, there is apt to be 
a slightly forced note in your mirth, and 
your jaunty demeanor is a trifle conscious 
and lacks the charm of heedless spon- 
taneity which made you so irresistible to 
the ladies in your younger days. You 
may put a bold face upon it, and brazenly 
assert that you feel as young as ever. 



206 



Nobody will believe you, dear friend. I 
do not believe you, and, what is worse, 
you do not believe yourself. If youth 
only meant a cheerful acceptance of life 
as it is, a readiness to join in gayety and 
innocent pleasures, a capacity for falling 
in love, etc., then I don't in the least 
doubt that you are young, though you 
may be past the meridian. But these are 
merely the superficial characteristics of 
youth. The deeper ones are as subtle as 
perfumes and as hard to catch. When 
they depart, they depart finally and for- 
ever. They are beyond simulation and 
imitation. And the fact is that no mid- 
dle-aged man, wishing to appear young, 
would ever dream of simulating them. 

The first (though the order is arbitrary) 
is a certain emotional exuberance, a cer- 
tain rank ferment of the blood, which 
prompts vehement sentiment and head- 
long, inconsiderate action. It is what 
Swinburne celebrates under the terms 
" foam " and "froth" and " mist," and it 
is what imparted an indefinable charm to 
his early verses. It was the warm and 
riotous pulse of youth ; and since, with- 



207 



out any complicity on his part, this has 
departed from him, he is not half the 
poet he was before. Middle age has shorn 
him of the locks of his strength. It is the 
rhythmic vehemence or the vehement 
rhythm of our blood which, at that happy 
period, makes poets of most of us. It is 
at that time that prose is too slow and 
pale and commonplace to express our 
emotions, and with the sweet uncon- 
sciousness of young birds we set about 
imitating the older singers. Oh, the di- 
vine folly of those years ! How I luxuri- 
ated in fictitious love and remorse and 
despair! How absorbingly interesting I 
found myself, while I was harboring all 
these emotions and relieving my over- 
burdened heart in poems which, when I 
read them now, seem positively humor- 
ous. How unblushingly I borrowed from 
Goethe, from Tennyson, but above all 
from Heine, who is the poet par excel- 
lence of unhappy love. The young lady 
with whom, for want of a better subject, 
I enacted this serio-comic tragedy, was a 
prosaic soul, and I strongly suspect that 
I really cared very little about her ; but I 



2o8 



needed some one to be unhappily in love 
with, and she seemed to be the only avail- 
able candidate for the position. There 
was in my breast a large store of accumu- 
lated sentiment which I had to expend 
upon somebody. 

TurguenefT once said to me, in response 
to an inquiry about his health : " Oh, I 
am getting old, and I know it by one in- 
fallible test. I try to be cheerful. I cher- 
ish my pleasant emotions. When I was 
young it was my gloomy sentiments I 
revelled in. It was my despair which 
nourished my self-respect. It was melan- 
choly, remorse for imagined sins, hopeless 
love, which I cherished with particular 
satisfaction." 

This remark did not at all strike me as 
profound at the time I heard it. I was 
then on the sunny side of the meridian, 
and incapable of philosophizing concern- 
ing my own condition. "What a pity," 
I thought, " that so great a man should 
be so cynical." 

And forthwith I spun a lurid romance 
about him out of such material as I had 
at my command, and concluded that his 



209 



cj^icism was the result of a disappoint- 
ed or unrequited love. (I have learned 
since that it was the result of a lavishly 
requited love.) But now that I have 
passed the meridian, I find myself veri- 
fying his experience. I surprise myself 
pushing (with a prosaic impatience) un- 
pleasant subjects out of sight ; subjects 
which ten or twenty years ago would have 
given me material for the most delight- 
fully gloomy meditations and sage entries 
in my diary concerning the bitterness of 
love, the insignificance of life, the futility 
of all human endeavor. Such scant emo- 
tions as I now have I allow to pass with- 
out apostrophizing them or photograph- 
ing them in a diary, or in any wise 
detailing them ; and if, by chance, I 
stumble upon one which it seems worth 
while to prolong, it is sure to be a cheer- 
ful one. My stories, which, in a sense, I 
wrote with my heart-blood (and no story 
is worth anything which is written with 
a cheaper liquid), had, by some strange, 
occult necessity, to end unhappily. Most 
of my heroes, in those days, had tragic 
experiences. I marvel, in retrospect, that 



a humane, kind-hearted man (as I beheve 
I am) could have heaped up so much 
gratuitous misery. One handsome and 
deserving young man, who never had 
harmed a fly, I induced to sit down and 
freeze to death on the front stoop under 
the window of his beloved. Another I 
condemned to a kind of roving vagabond- 
age, like the Wandering Jew, all owing to 
a sentimental affliction ; and a third wore 
out his life miserably in an effort to re- 
store sight to the girl whom he loved. A 
fiendish ingenuity assisted me in invent- 
ing distressing situations, from which 
there seemed no issue possible except 
death by frost or fire or a long self-im- 
posed martyrdom of sorrow and suffer- 
ing. Problems which to heroic and 
uncompromising youth seem insoluble, 
differences which seem irreconcilable, 
may to middle age, with its easy, laissez- 
faire philosophy, seem not at all hope- 
less. The stoic of twenty frequently be- 
comes an epicurean at forty. Young 
Goethe could see no possible fate but 
death for Werther, enamoured of his 
ix\^wdi''s fiancee ; but the middle-aged pub- 



lisher, Nicolai, subjected the sentimental 
hero to medical treatment, and by liberal 
cupping dispelled his romantic fanta- 
sies, until his reason reasserted itself. 
And in the end he made a rich and sensi- 
ble match, and became the father of a 
large and blooming family. 

In no book with which I am acquainted 
is the subtle process, incident upon the 
passing of the meridian of life, more truth- 
fully and delightfully depicted than in An 
Indian Stnmner, by W. D. Howells. It 
is not the occasional twinge of rheuma- 
tism, or the weariness after the ball, or 
an inclination to drowsiness after dinner 
which primarily gives the impression of 
middle age in the hero ; but it is his whole 
attitude towards life, his humorous ac- 
ceptance of reality as it is, and his utter 
incapacity for sentimxcntal self-delusion. 
That is a fatal — in fact, the most fatal — 
defect in a lover. Love, without it, is 
robbed of its poetry. It becomes a sor- 
did thing ; a physical attraction, or men- 
tal compatibility; a mere prose prologue 
to matrimony. It is because youth con- 
stitutes nine-tenths of the public of the 



American author, that the American nov- 
el (if it aims at popularity) is obliged to 
pander to this self-delusion, and represent 
life as, according to youth's sanguine 
scheme, it ought to be. It must blink 
facts, or view them in a vague and gen- 
eral way through romantic spectacles. 
The author must play Providence, and 
with a Rhadamantine justice reward low- 
ly virtue and visit retribution upon pros- 
perous wickedness. He must reconstruct 
the scheme of things in accordance with 
the ideal demands of his reader, or forfeit 
his popularity. Not that I blame youth 
for demanding a so-called poetic justice ! 
No, I envy it. I wish I were myself capa- 
ble of that charming delusion ; or capa- 
ble of pretending that I believed in it, 
even though my faith had departed. 

Now I do not mean to imply that mid- 
dle age, though it may have lost the high- 
est zest in existence, is without its com- 
pensations. I admit there is a touch of 
exquisitely cruel regret in the thought 
that I am henceforth no more to be num- 
bered among that happy throng to whom 
folly is becoming and permissible ; that I 



am henceforth incapable, by my approach 
or departure, of accelerating the pulse of 
the sweet girls who are yet capable of 
accelerating mine ; that, matrimonially 
speaking, I am no longer of any account 
(having made, once for all, a felicitous 
choice). No one who has passed the fatal 
meridian of forty will deny that there is 
something humiliating in the fact that 
(even though you Were unattached) you 
would now cut a comic figure as a lover, 
and no maiden's heart would incline nat- 
urally to you, except with a filial devo- 
tion, or from sordid and worldly motives. 
The sweet unrest, the mysterious fascina- 
tion, the fine, healthy, primeval passion, 
which inspire the noblest poetry of life, 
you are no longer capable of awakening, 
though you may still flatter yourself that 
you are capable of feeling it. You are 
growing stout ; you are compelled to be 
a little prudent about your health (though 
you take care to disguise your caution or 
exercise it on the sly), and finally the first 
gray hair (which you scrupulously elimi- 
nate) strikes the fatal conviction to your 
heart that you are no longer young — that 



your youthful pretences are hollow and 
transparent shams which deceive no one 
but yourself. In fact, I know nothing 
more tragic than a man's discovery of that 
first gray hair ; unless it be a woman's 
discovery of it. 

But, pardon me, I forgot that it was 
the compensations of middle life I was to 
speak about, not its privations. There 
is a poem by Robert Browning (and a no- 
ble poem it is), which puts the case at 
issue between youth and age with marvel- 
lous force and insight. I shall not now 
quarrel with the sentiment of the open- 
ing verse, though some years ago I should 
have found it more than problematic : 

" Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be. 
The last of life for 7uhich the first xvas made. 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith: A whole I planned. 
Youth shows but half ; trust God ; see all, nor 
be afraid." 

There is something wondrously con- 
soling in this reflection that youth is but 
the preparation for something better to 



come, a somewhat fantastically decorated 
vestibule through which we enter into the 
more soberly upholstered house where we 
are to dwell, and where our best and most 
effective work is to be done. The youth 
really builds the house in which he is to 
dwell as a man (except in the few cases in 
which his fathers have built it for him), 
and its commodiousness and beauty of 
style depend upon the strength and the 
genius that are in him. Many of us 
erected during our turbulent years, while 
we were repeating the perennial folly of 
the race, a very much better and hand- 
somer and more commodious edifice than 
we were aware of; and we live secure in 
our moderate prosperity, happy in con- 
genial labor and in the affection of our 
children. Though we may have to ac- 
commodate ourselves to a more prosaic 
jog-trot than we once thought compatible 
with our fiery genius, we find a deep satis- 
faction in the very toil and obligations 
which impede our speed. There are yet a 
hundred things which we would like to do, 
but which, out of regard for those who are 
dear to us, we have to refrain from doing. 



2l6 



I know a middle-aged engineer, now- 
far past the meridian, who has been 
walking about for twenty years with an 
immortal epic in his brain, and will be 
walking about with it till the day when 
he will be confined within a narrow rose- 
wood box from which no epic, even if 
ever so immortal, can escape. But I ver- 
ily believe that that epic (which, on ac- 
count of family necessities he never will 
get a chance to write) has benefited its 
author more than it ever would have 
done, if it had appeared in cold print. It 
has redeemed his life from the common- 
place. It has given him the precious feeling 
of being exceptional — of being something 
more than the world gave him credit for 
being ; and, finally, it has lifted his exist- 
ence to a higher plane by giving him sym- 
pathy with lofty though futile endeavor. 

" Far thence — a paradox 

Which comforts while it mocks — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail ? 
What I aspired to be. 
But was not, comforts me: 
A brute I might have been, but would not 
sink i' the scale. 



" But all the world's coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb, 
So passed in making up the main account ; 
All instincts immature, 
All purposes unsure. 
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled 
the man's amount ; 

" Thoughts hardly to be packed 
Into a narrow act ; 
Fancies that broke through language and es- 
caped ; 
All I could never be. 
All men ignored in me — 
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
pitcher shaped." 

It may be a somewhat ethereal compen- 
sation which the poet here hints at, but on 
that account none the less real. You will 
contend that it lies beyond the experi- 
ence of most men, and is, therefore, not 
typical. But I doubt if to the grossly 
material man, incapable of harboring 
such aspiratfons, middle age has any com- 
pensation beyond the mere satisfaction in 
outward prosperity and in agreeable fam- 
ily relations. It is the highly developed 
individual who points the way for the 



race ; who by anticipating the normal 
development reveals what is possible to 
all. The highest pleasures of life are 
those which cannot be measured by rule 
of thumb ; and the keenest delights are 
not those of achievement, but those of 
anticipation. Only the aspiring man is 
truly a man. Some mocking hope, some 
secret fantastic yearning— corresponding 
to the epic in the engineer's brain — is to 
be found in many more lives than we are 
apt to suspect. It is the spark of youth's 
Promethean fire astray amid the gray re- 
alities of middle age ; and if you can con- 
trive to carry this spark along with you 
and to keep it alive, you need have no 
fear of crossing the fatal meridian. 

September 23, 1888 



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